Storm on the Horizon
by Failcraft Heroes Society
Summary: The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Post New!Series 3, Mass Effect post-2 pre-DLC.
1. Prologue

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Prologue**

It was quiet again.

He hated when it was quiet. Bigger on the inside, sure, but that just meant that the emptiness was expanded with it. His home, his life, his _other half _sometimes, and it reflected – now, as always – what he was feeling within.

It didn't matter what happened, it didn't matter who he brought along with him.

_I told her – I always said to her, time and time again – I said, get out. So this is me, getting out._

It didn't matter that it was the best parting of ways he'd had in a long time. Two hearts meant double the pain of leaving.

It was time to go. To move on, to see the wonders of the cosmos, of civilization at its best (and sometimes at its worst) (sometimes at the same time).

He flicked a switch and immediately knew something was wrong. There was a sound – a _bad_ sound, one that distinctly shouldn't be there because he knew all the good sounds _and that wasn't one of them _– and then the universe went sideways.

He groaned and picked himself up off the floor, wishing for the ten thousandth time that he had installed some sort of safety device in his ship, something that would protect him from smacking his head against the cold metal flooring.

Cushions, maybe.

Cursing to himself in the vilest language of all the cosmos that he could recall, he went back to the control panels to find out what went wrong.

The universe was still sideways. He was right-side-up and the universe was _sideways_. There was something about that he couldn't quite put his finger on, mostly because if he tried then his finger would be at a distinct sideways angle to what he was looking at, and then where would that leave him? Still confused. This was _wrong_.

Thrusting his hand into the pockets of his jacket and sorting through the combined detritus of his adventures (always an interesting experience, never really quite remember all the things that are in there), he pulled out a pair of cardboard 3D-glasses – with the red and blue cellophane lenses still intact – and put them on.

"What?"

He took them off and shook them a bit, before putting them on again. These were the same glasses he used to detect the Void Stuff from travelling between dimensions, and it was _possible _they might be slightly a bit completely broken, but nevertheless –

"What!"

He rushed to the console, typing furiously at the computer to try to isolate what was going on. It couldn't be right, couldn't possibly be true. And yet, the readout confirmed what the glasses indicated.

Void Stuff. Completely permeating everything, so thick that it turned his view completely and impenetrably black. Which meant that he was currently _in _the Void Between Dimensions, the Veil of Time and Space, the Jammy Dodger of Frippery or whatever he had described it as last. That Which Must Not Be Opened had been, and he was passing through it once more against his will.

All of a sudden, the shaking stopped, the light above the door blinking once as it verified landing on some stable surface in some stable era. Peering through the glasses again, he saw the Void Stuff still swirling about, but dormant once more. He was through, and if he moved very quickly, he might be able to head back through the rift before it sealed again, stranding him here. All reason pointed towards him doing just that...

...except, if he did, he wouldn't get to see what sort of strange planet he was on. He'd never get to know why the TARDIS brought him here.

Before that thought had even had the idea of beginning to cross his mind, he was already at the door, unlatching it and peering outside—

"_Alright, mister, hands where I can see them! Move it!_"

—and stared directly into a face covered with both leathery plates and some sort of blue and white paint. In front of that face was the rather large gun which had an impressively detailed rifled barrel. He could appreciate the masterwork of this as he was staring directly into it.

Around Leatherface was a mixture of similarly-built individuals, interspersed with the occasional human. All were in matching blue body armor, though the humans forewent the face paint.

The Doctor dutifully put his hands above his head and allowed himself to be manhandled away. He stared up at the horizon, his eyes widening in surprise as there was none; the ground curved up into a ring, himself standing on the inside of the structure. Stretching off into the distance past the ring were five enormous plates, arranged around the ring, themselves covered in artificial geography and related structures. He took one last look at his beloved box, already fading into the distance, and summed up the entirety of his thoughts.

"_What._"


	2. Chapter One: Identify FriendFoe

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon **  
**Chapter One - Identify Friend/Foe**

"_-–peared right in the middle of the Presidium. Nobody's quite sure how it got there._"

Garrus paused he passed by the Briefing/Comm room. That was Councilor Anderson's voice. He stopped to listen at the door – he knew he was being rude, but he honestly didn't remember the last time Anderson called in person.

"What can you tell me about that box?"

"_We're not really sure. It appears to be made of simple wood, which was the first thing that tipped us off._"

Garrus shook his head and entered the room. Rude or not, his curiosity won out. Besides, Shepard rarely minded. If she did, she'd have locked the door.

"The whole thing out of wood? Must have cost a fortune to get that shipped to the Citadel. What was inside it?"

"_Nobody knows. It's turned away all our scans and C-Sec hasn't gotten a warrant to break into it yet._" Anderson's head turned as he noticed Garrus entering the room. "_Officer Vakarian._"

Garrus was somewhat vindicated when Shepard absently waved him in. "Councilor. And technically I'm not an officer anymore. What's this about C-Sec?"

Green eyes rose to meet his own. "Blue box just appeared on the Citadel, out of thin air."

"Shit. The Ilos relay?"

"_No,_" said Anderson, shaking his head. "_We've locked that one down on both ends._"

"It's possible it came in from another personal relay from somewhere else," Garrus countered, crossing his arms over his chest. "There are places on the Citadel we've still yet to open up, and who knows what the Reapers might have—"

"_Trust me, it's the first thing we checked. No Eezo traces anywhere near it. There's also the matter of the guy inside._"

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said you couldn't scan it."

"_We can't,_" said Anderson. "_He came out as soon as it appeared. C-Sec hauled him away, he's currently in a holding cell, asking for a lawyer. C-Sec won't do anything until he talks, and I can't just go in and ask questions myself._"

"So you need a Spectre to come in and shake things up a bit."

Anderson chuckled. "_I need a Shepard to come in and ask the questions she needs to ask. The fact that she's a Spectre just makes it easier on my paperwork._"

Garrus narrowed his eyes. "This still sounds weird. What if it's a Reaper trick?"

"Then all the more reason for us to go," said Shepard, standing up and stretching. "We'll turn around and head for the Citadel. We'll be there in..." She trailed off pointedly.

"_One hour from the closest Relay, another half for docking clearance and decon._"

"Thanks, Joker. Normandy out."

Anderson's hologram faded as the connection was cut.

"So what do you think, Shepard?" said Garrus, his eyes still locked on the space where the hologram had just been. "Reaper trap?"

"Too subtle. They're on their way en masse, there's no point sending a spy this late in the game. Not when they know we're expecting them."

"Maybe that's the point. The Citadel's got two choices; focus on him, or ignore him. Either our attention is diverted when the Reapers show up, or he goes around disabling our defenses. It's a win/win for them."

Shepard sighed, running a hand through her short red hair. "Remember when this was easy? Just seven of us against Saren and the Geth. No extragalactic squidbots coming for our souls, just a bunch of enemies and a clear field of fire." She stared off into the distance, shaking her head wistfully. "Now it's just us against thousands and thousands of eldritch abominations. What would you call that?"

Garrus let out a short bark of laughter. "Easy. A target-rich environment. Just pretend we're in a broken-down apartment back on Omega."

Shepard stared at him for a long moment, before breaking down into laughter of her own. It was a refreshing sound, Garrus thought, something that the Normandy hadn't heard for far too long. It was infectious, too; before long, he was chuckling away.

"Alright," Shepard said, getting herself back under control. "Let's see about Anderson's mysterious blue box."

oOoOoOoOoOo

The central C-Sec office was bustling with activity. With the sudden influx of refugees from border colonies, petty thefts and public disturbances were at all-time peaks. It certainly didn't help matters with all the would-be soap-box prophets sharing their gospel with anyone who would listen (but mostly passersby who didn't care to). These took the normal range of such proclamations: xenophobic ranting, blaming the current government for economic issues, even one claiming that the galaxy would soon be overrun by monsters made of chocolate mousse.

All told, Central Precinct had its hands full. Which is why Shepard was slightly surprised to find herself hustled past the rather long queue in front of the duty sergeant's desk.

"Commander!" shouted the sergeant, exhausted delight filling his face. "Thank you for coming. You can do me a favor by _getting rid of this idiot_." He jerked a thumb in the general direction of the holding cells.

"Problem with our mystery guest?" Garrus asked from her right.

"He's absolutely impossible. Asking inane questions about how the station works, and constantly squinting at random things at the walls while he ignores your answers." The sergeant sighed, shaking his head. "And then he got _bored_. Listen."

Shepard frowned, about to ask him what he meant, before she noticed a rhythmic thumping sound. "What is that?"

"Tennis ball. Pulled it straight out of his empty coat pockets, don't ask me how. That's not even the first one, either; we took that one away from him and he pulled out another!"

"So take his coat away," Shepard said, narrowing her eyes. C-Sec was usually – she groaned inwardly even while thinking it – on the ball about things like that.

"We did. Don't ask me where he got this one; frankly, I don't want to know." The sergeant waved impatiently at the holding cells. "Just grab him and go, we've got to clear some space for a couple of those street preachers."

"I thought C-Sec didn't arrest for preaching without a permit," said Shepard, raising an eyebrow. "What did _they _do?"

The sergeant glared. "You mean aside from inciting a riot and attacking civilians?"

"Point taken. We should go."

They pushed past the crowd and opened the door to the cell block. "I really hope it wasn't that chocolate mousse guy," Garrus said, casting a sideways glance at the throng of people behind them. "I liked him."

"Well, you know what they say about getting between people and their chocolate." Shepard eyed the console and keyed in her Council passcode. "This guy's in C23, right? Down the hall."

oOoOoOoOoOo

The door to Holding Cell C23 slid open, allowing Shepard and Garrus to discover its sole occupant... bouncing a tennis ball. Nothing tricky, nothing special, just a simple tennis ball, bouncing off the floor, the far wall, and back to his hand. Floor, wall, hand. Floor, wall, hand.

"My name is Shepard, and I've been directed to take you to the Council for questioning," Shepard began, placing her hand near her sidearm. The pistol was warm and inviting, and she tried to ignore the itching in her palm as the man _completely ignored her_, continuing to bounce the tennis ball.

Floor, wall, hand. Floor, wall, hand. Floor, wall, hand.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to-"

"I'm sorry, can you just hang on to that thought for about twenty more seconds? I'm on a bit of a streak here." The man continued to bounce the ball, completely ignoring the two heavily-armed individuals as he silently moved his lips, as if concentrating on the bouncing ball was the most important thing in the universe.

Shepard and Garrus exchanged a Look. "You know, we could just leave," said Garrus, jerking his head towards the door. "I don't think a Reaper Spy would be all that interested in bouncing a ball."

Shepard shook her head. "No. Anderson wanted to talk to Steve McQueen here. You want to go up there and tell him you changed your mind?"

"Hell no. Send Grunt, he can regenerate." Garrus glanced back over to the man, taking in his disheveled hair, pinstriped suit, and scuffed up white trainers. "Who's Steve McQueen?"

"Actor." She raised an eyebrow at Garrus's lack of response. "You know how it is, on a ship most of your childhood. My mother had us watch all those old vids from the 2D era, said it was important history."

"And well should she have done," interrupted the man, catching the ball one last time and putting it aside. "Five thousand three hundred sixty-three. My personal best. I don't think I've had this long of a stretch in a prison before an interrogation in quite some time, really, which conveniently leads to saying hello to you! Hello!" He stood up and stretched.

"I said questioning, not interrogation," protested Shepard, holding up a hand in an optimistic attempt to forestall any concern.

"Yes, we~ell," drawled the man, "one's always accompanied by the threat of the other, innit? Especially where prison is involved. ...is prison still involved?"

"That depends on how the questioning goes," said Garrus, narrowing his eyes.

"As I said, then!"

Shepard shook her head slowly. "It's a paranoid time right now, everything needs to be double-checked. Especially with someone just _appearing _in the political headquarters of the Citadel, with no ID, no explanation for transport, and no biological matches in the database."

The man stuck his hands deep into his trouser pockets and shrugged sheepishly. "Ah, _that_. Yes."

"Yes, _that_," Shepard said, crossing her arms. "So if you're wondering where the line is between questioning and interrogation, there it is. Who are you?"

"That's a rather complicated question, I think."

Garrus leaned back against the wall. "Not so complicated of a question as 'Shepard, how do you expect me to clean up all this blood?'"

"Knock it off, Garrus," Shepard hissed. She turned back to the man and frowned. "Start with the basics. Your name, followed by what the hell you are and how you got a big wooden box onto the Presidium."

At the mention of the box, the man's eyes widened in shock. "Is it alright? Where did you put it? You didn't touch it, did you?"

"I have no idea. Answer the questions, and maybe I'll see about finding out for you."

"Right, sorry. Best I can hope for, I suppose. Well, I'm the Doctor."

Shepard blinked. "Doctor who?"

The man's eyes actually _twinkled _in delight, she'd go before an advisory council and swear it if she needed to. "That never gets old. No, sorry, just 'The Doctor'. Don't really have a name elsewise so that'll have to do for you, Miss...?"

"Shepard," she said. "_Commander_. How did you get on the Citadel?"

"Is that what this place is? Blimey, the name certainly fits, doesn't it? All sparkly and majestic." The Doctor glanced around the cell. "Would it be a bit of a stretch to say that box was my... ship?"

Shepard glared at him. "It's a box."

"Well, yes."

"Made of _wood_."

"The good ones are, you know. It's got a bit... more than that on the inside, anyway." The Doctor shrugged. "It's my ship, and it landed here. We~ell, crashed. We~ell, kind of ripped a hole through the known universe and then crashed. I don't exactly know how myself, it was sort of a flobbley bit of space-time jumble for a bit there, and then here I am."

Shepard groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose in another optimistic attempt (this time to forestall the headache she _knew _she was going to have.) "Right. Mass effect field. That's all you needed to say. Garrus, outside."

She followed Garrus outside the cell and sealed the Doctor back in. Garrus strolled over to the viewport on the far side of the cell block and stared out at the nebula. "What do you make of it?"

"I don't know," Shepard admitted. "He seems genuine, if a bit loose in the head. I wasn't getting a Reaper vibe off him, though."

"That still freaks me out, you know. How you can sense them."

"Me too." She sighed. "One of these days I'm going to have to get a full documented list of exactly what Cerberus did to me. Maybe Mordin can sort it out. Anyway, it's still useful, and I'm not getting Reaper from him."

"I don't trust him. He smells _wrong_."

"Oi! I'll have you know I shower regularly."

Shepard and Garrus spun around, pointing their guns directly at the Doctor, who was standing right behind them and sliding a small silver object back into his pocket.

"That was a military-grade seal on that cell door," Shepard growled, her finger on the trigger of her trusty pistol. "We didn't hear a _thing_, and I've got souped-up hearing."

"When you've lived as long as I have, Commander," said the Doctor, unfazed by the weaponry centimeters from his nose, "you pick up some tricks. Anyway, I get the feeling you're in a bit of a rush, so I thought I'd hurry it up a bit. I assure you, I am not a threat to you, so you can put those down at any time."

Shepard gave a short derisive bark of laughter. "You appear without any warning, you can get through the toughest locks on the Citadel, and you're not any species we have on record. How am I supposed to believe you're not dangerous?"

"I said I wasn't a threat, Commander Shepard, I never said I wasn't dangerous." The chill in the Doctor's eyes almost made her drop her gun. Almost. "I'm doing things your way, and I'll be perfectly happy to do so for as long as you like, but the one thing you should never forget is that I _am _dangerous. I am probably the most dangerous thing you've seen in quite some time." His eyes softened, and he gave a tired smile. "But that's not a surprise to you, is it, Commander? You deal with dangerous people on a daily basis, don't you?"

Shepard blinked, then holstered her gun. "Garrus, stand down."

"But-"

"He could have gotten out at any time, and he's willing to come with us for now." Shepard nodded at the Doctor as Garrus lowered his rifle. "Come with me, we'll take you to the Council, and then we'll take a look at that box of yours."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed the Doctor, suddenly all smiles. "I'm sure there are plenty of questions to be had, I'm quite looking forward to it. _Allons-y!_"


	3. Chapter Two: Avatar

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
Chapter Two - Avatar**

In a hospital bed on the Citadel, an asari's voice drew the attention of the attending nurse on his rounds. He pulled back the curtain, preparing to call the doctor over, but the sight that greeted him stayed his hand. His fingers, poised over the call button, twitched once in a subconscious rhythm, and he turned and ran for the door.

"Doctor Kelis! Come quick!" he shouted, pulling open the door to the office.

Kelis, a turian in the early elegance of middle age, parted her mandibles in surprise. "Brian, what the hell are you doing, barging in like this?"

"It's the comatose asari, ma'am. She's... you'd better come look!" With this, the nurse dashed away, leaving Kelis to grumble and hurry after him.

"If it's so important to run around leaving cryptic remarks, you should be able to take a couple seconds to actually tell me what's going on," snapped Kelis as she reached the bed and pulled back the curtain. "If you just say 'You'd better come see' and leave, not everyone's going to just drop what they're..."

She trailed off as she tried to process what she was seeing. "Spirits alive..."

The asari was floating a handful of centimeters above the bed, her back arched and limbs flailing about as if in massive pain. Her eyes were open and glowing an eerie blue - not the soft blue of active biotic energy fields, but a stranger, deeper blue.

"Doctor, look at the readings!" Brian pointed to the monitors above the bed. "I've never seen anything like this before!"

If Kelis had been human, she'd have paled. "Unfortunately, Brian," she said, her voice wavering, "I have." She hit the red panic button on the wall, sending a signal to Citadel Security's central computers. The Emergency Quarantine procedures enacted, and soon the medbay was filled with the sounds of doorways sealing shut, ventilation units redirecting to internal scrubbers, and a direct comm connection to C-Sec opening.

"This is Doctor Kelis Socrat in Zakera Ward. We have enacted Protocol Zero. Please advise."

"_Acknowledged, Doctor Socrat_," came the reply. "_Please confirm Protocol Zero_."

"Patient 5363 has awakened, showing signs of Syndrome C-Delta-Five. Repeat, Syndrome-"

"**TOO LATE**"

With the sound of an explosion and the screech of protesting electronics, the connection to C-Sec was terminated.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Not many things put David Anderson at a loss for words. His initial candidacy for Spectre was grueling, but he soldiered on. Captaining a starship was its own challenge, but he rose to meet it. Representing Earth and all her colonies on the Council was at frustrating at _best _- ranging on a scale from herding cats to spinning straw into a gold-like substitute - but he did it with considerable aplomb because hey, who else was going to?

The blue box that was currently sitting in his office, however, completely confounded him. Not only that, but it was being swarmed by techs, poking it with their omnitools, and none of _them_ could figure it out, either. Visually, it was made of wood with glass panels in the doorframes, a light on top, and English lettering proclaiming it to belong to a local constabulary. And yet, it continued to block all penetrative scans, alternating between a hole in the world - quite literally, _simply not there _- and being a 100% opaque black spot on sensors.

What was worse, it was being incomprehensible _in the middle of his office_, which meant that the onslaught of technicians puttering about and bandying theories amongst themselves were keeping him from getting to the stack of files in his inbox. Not to mention the massive headache it all was giving him.

"Enough!" he roared, standing at his desk and hurling a particularly vicious glare at the crew. "You've taken all the readings you're going to take, now I would be eternally grateful if you all would _get the hell out of my office_!"

David Anderson, Renowned Intergalactic Diplomat.

As the grumbling techs filed out of his office, he was relieved to see a flash of familiar red hair fighting against the tide. "Shepard. Good to see you."

Shepard grinned that half-grin of hers and saluted. "Councillor. Good to see you haven't changed all that much, sir."

Anderson chuckled. "Beaurocratic nonsense. I told the Council we've already scanned that thing-" he jerked his thumb at the wooden box still sitting in the middle of the floor, frowning slightly as Garrus and a wild-haired man in a pinstriped suit and a dusky tan coat started circling it "-but they had to get their own people in to see it. Is that the guy?"

Shepard grimaced. "It is. David Anderson, meet... _Doctor_, front and center." She shook her head as the man poked his head out from around the box with a bewildered look on his face. "Doctor, this is David Anderson, Earth's representative to the Council."

The Doctor's eyes lit up, a delighted expression crossing his face. "Councillor, so pleased to meet you. I've heard many things about you."

"Have you now?" Anderson glanced over at Shepard, raising an eyebrow.

"Actually, nothing at all," admitted the Doctor, not an ounce of shame in his voice at the lie. "Bit of a traveller, me. Passing through. Though it seems that I've come across a bit of excitement, haven't I?" He turned about quickly, taking in the open-air design of the office and its view of the Presidium. "Blimey, what a place. Very Niven in its construction, I should think. Is that an artificial sky?"

For the second time that day, Anderson was speechless. He shot Shepard a helpless look, and despaired when she returned it with a wry shake of her head.

"He's exciteable," Garrus commented, sauntering up. "It's cute, really. Makes you want to get a leash and a rodent ball for him."

"Oi! I'm not three feet away, you lot, I can still hear you!" The Doctor spun around again, the picture of mock affrontedness.

Anderson shook his head. "...in any case. Shepard, we've managed to disprove any sign of Collector involvement with the way the Doctor and his box have arrived."

"You mean Reaper involvement, sir."

"Not officially, Shepard, you know that."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "What is it going to take to get the Council to accept the threat? Do I have to hog-tie one of the damned things and drop it in the Turians' home system?"

"Calm down," Anderson pleaded, holding his hands up to forestall her wrath. "You know I'm on your side on this. Don't take my head off just because those three can't get their heads out of their asses long enough to see what's right in front of-"

Anything else he would have said was interrupted by an alert on his computer console. He opened the message, and tried to fight the feeling of ice sliding down his spine.

"What is it?" Shepard asked, all business once more. Her hand, Anderson noted, was firmly on the butt of her pistol, with her finger barely touching the safety catch.

"Trouble in the Med Bay. Something that might be familiar to you. Get down there, now."

Shepard and Garrus took off without another word, and Anderson took a seat at his desk. Sometimes he could feel the years pressing down on him; regardless of the numerous advances in life-extending medical technology, he was simply getting too old for this shit.

"Doctor," he said, not looking up from his console, "as long as you're here, maybe you can explain to me these bioscans we took."

He looked up when he didn't hear a response. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen.

oOoOoOoOoOo

It wasn't all that difficult to pursue Commander Shepard through the Citadel - there weren't all that many heavily-armed and armored gingers roaming about the station, and really all he had to do was follow the camera flashes. Whoever Shepard was, she was obviously a celebrity, in addition to being some sort of on-call security force for the local government, considering how she flagrantly ignored the Citadel's blue-armored policemen.

The Doctor frowned to himself. He'd have to look into that. In his experience, governments working above the law tended towards the corrupt. Even if this Shepard was inherently a good person - he was definitely getting the heroic vibe off her, brutal and sarcastic she may be - it was a system that almost invariably strayed. Given the mix of shock, worship and fear he was getting from the civilians that had quickly darted out of her way, it probably already had.

He lost track of them upon entering a crowded ward. In his rush to skirt a particularly disgruntled-looking reporter, he ran full-tilt into a pair of heavy-suited individuals with a particularly chelonoid look to them. He spent twenty minutes assuring them that no, he wasn't attacking them, really he wasn't, would he be attacking a pair of - krogan, is it? Good name, really good name for a species - without a weapon of any kind, look, and no, he didn't know anything about petitions to stock the lakes with tropical fish but he'd certainly look into it when he had a moment... By the time he finally got away, the path had closed up, and he started wandering about, trying to figure out where this medbay was.

Silly him, as it turned out. He really should have known better, it would have been a lot simple just to slow down and listen for the screaming.

And away he went again.

By the time he had caught up with Shepard and Garrus, they were already half-way through burning the lock on the medical wing.

"You know," he said, panting, "I wish just once I'd find a space station that didn't involve a lot of running around from one end to another. I mean _really_, is it so hard to have a trolley service? Or bikes?"

Shepard looked up from her plasma torch and groaned. "I really should have known you'd follow us. Exactly the kind of day I'm having."

Garrus blinked and parted his mandibles in what _had_to be a grin of some kind. "What happened to that Cerberus-enhanced hearing, Shepard? I knew he was on our trail from the very beginning."

"...I mean _everyone _has bikes of some kind..."

"Shut it, Garrus. I was focused on the _Reaper infiltration in Zakera Ward _at the time, if you remember correctly." She powered down her plasma torch and stood up. "Doctor, as long as you're here, might as well make yourself useful. Can you open this?"

"...even _Daleks _have wheels, or hoversleds, or whatever - sorry, yes, what?" The Doctor looked up from his external monologue and blinked.

"That thing you used to open the cell door. Can you get us into Medical? There's a Quarantine Seal in place, I can't bypass it."

The Doctor reached into his coat, pulled out his sonic screwdriver, and started fiddling with settings. "Quarantine for what, exactly?"

"Something that shouldn't be here," said Garrus, his tone tark and foreboding. He winced a bit at the sound of the sonic screwdriver interacting with the lock.

The door clicked and started to slide back. "Got it!"

Shepard nodded and pulled her sidearm, holding it up in a ready position. "Doctor, stay behind us. Garrus, you see any orange glow-"

"-put it out," finished Garrus, unlimbering a blocky device that he unfolded into a sniper rifle.

The medical wing was dark, lit only by the occasional computer console and flickering overhead. The Doctor's nostrils were filled with the cloying scent of disinfectant, traces of ozone, and the steadily-increasing metallic tang of blood. Not just human blood, either; there were other, new scents that nonetheless carried a similar feel. It was starting to give him a headache, which was a bit unusual-

No. He was wrong, the _blood _wasn't giving him the headache.

"Commander," he said, furrowing his brow and putting on his spectacles, "it's here. Whatever it is."

Shepard turned and gave him a withering glare, but nodded after a second. "Where?"

"There," he said, pointing to the side office. The door was closed and the room was darkened, but the psychic aura he was picking up was coming from inside.

Shepard skirted the wall, keeping as far out of line of sight from the window as possible. She tapped the door switch, but nothing happened, not even when she prodded at it with an orange holographic device that materialized over her left hand. She motioned for the Doctor to follow.

"No use," said the Doctor after trying his screwdriver. "The code is transitioning into a deadlock pattern, I can't break it."

"Shepard," called Garrus, still covering them from the doorway. "You might want to take a look at this."

Shepard and the Doctor edged out into the middle of the room to see where Garrus was pointing. The light in the side office was now on, and through the window they could see a blue-skinned female figure, floating eerily in midair.

"Blimey," said the Doctor, taking his spectacles off. "That's it. That's where the psychic signal is coming from. That woman."

"That woman" spun gracefully in mid-air, turning to face Shepard. Her eyes snapped open, filled with a bright blue glow. "**SHEPARD.**"

The Doctor blinked at the baritone psychic reverberation in the woman's voice. "Well, there's something you don't see every day."

"Not unless you're me," remarked Shepard, wryly. She turned her attention to the floating woman. "What do you want?"

"**YOUR DESTRUCTION. YOU HAVE BEEN A THORN IN OUR SIDE FOR TOO LONG. YOU DO NOT DESERVE THE HONOR OF WATCHING YOUR GALAXY IN FLAMES.**"

oOoOoOoOoOo

**Situation: **Indoctrinated asari used as Reaper Avatar, slaughtered inhabitants.

**Goal: **Prevent access to rest of Citadel. Destroy.

Shepard kept a firm hand on her weapon, keeping the pistol firmly in line with the asari's forehead. The glass was, unfortunately, Citadel-manufactured and entirely bulletproof, and if the Doctor couldn't open the door, then they couldn't get in. Of course, that also meant that the Avatar couldn't get out, unless it wanted a face full of Tungsten shavings at mach speeds.

**Tactic: **When a stalemate occurs, keep it as long as possible to A: squeeze out as much information as possible and B: arrange the situation so that when the stalemate breaks, it is on your side.

"Why here, now?" she asked, narrowing her eyes in what Jacob refers to (behind her back, as if she didn't know he was doing it) as The Shepard Glare. "We already know you're on your way, and we've locked down the Citadel's relays so you can't jump in here."

The asari's head lolled about. "**YOU HAVE GAINED OUR ATTENTION, SHEPARD. YOU ARE THE PINNACLE OF THE CURRENT CIVILIZATION. YOU WILL BE TREATED ACCORDINGLY.**"

"Hang on just a tick," interrupted the Doctor. "Can I just say something? You're controlling this woman through a psychic rebound channel, yes? On a quantum thingummer that uses - what'cha call 'em, Shepard? Mass Effect fields? - Mass Effect fields to bounce it through pinhole singularities from an extragalactic location, am I right?"

The Avatar rotated slowly to face the Doctor. "**IT IS IMMATERIAL HOW WE ARE CONTACTING YOU. WE ARE THE DOOM THAT BEFALLS-**"

"Yes, yes, blood and death and all that. I've heard it before. But you know what's so interesting about that psychic rebound channel? Anyone?"

The Doctor's grin remained on his face, but his eyes hardened into something that made Shepard thankful it wasn't directed at her. She had been wondering over the past hour why she had taken the Doctor at his word, about how he was the most dangerous person she had ever met. Now she was starting to understand.

"I'll tell you," continued the Doctor, his voice suddenly cold and forbidding. "It's because the channel you're using just happens to coincide with my own aura, and I am _blocking you out_."

The Avatar shrieked in fury and pain, its distorted voice sliding through unsettlingly inhuman pitches. Her limbs thrashed about wildly as the bright blue aura constricted around her, the few remaining light fixtures shattering all around them-

And then silence fell, punctuated only by the muffled thump of a body dropping to the floor behind the door.

Shepard turned her suit's floodlight towards the Doctor. He turned to her and met her eyes, looking for... approval? No, it was clear he wasn't looking for her _approval_, she could tell that, but the expression on his face was definitely seeking _something _from her. She nodded to him anyway, hoping that was enough, and rushed forward to catch him as he fell.

"Whoo-ee," he groaned, clutching onto her arms. "I am _not _doing that again any time soon."

"What the hell did you do, Doc?" Garrus asked, coming forward from the doorway.

"Just what I said. Blocked out the psychic signal. Whoever that thing was controlling, she's free and clear for now." He managed to pull himself back to his feet. "I'll have a _whopper _of a headache for the next few hours, though, I can tell you."

Shepard holstered her gun and went to the window, shining her floodlight into it. Sure enough, the asari was sprawled on the floor, all visual traces of Reaper control gone. "Commander Shepard to C-Sec," she said, triggering her suit's comm system.

"_C-Sec Dispatch, we're here, Commander. What's the situation?_"

"Target has been neutralized. We have one survivor. Asari, unconscious and with possible mental trauma." She glanced at the Doctor, who nodded reassuringly. "Recommend monitored quarantine, but she is threat level zero at the moment. Acknowledge."

There was silence at the other end for a moment. "_Understood, Shepard. We're sending a team now. C-Sec out._"

oOoOoOoOoOo

"I still don't understand why they're putting so much effort into me," Shepard lamented as they watched C-Sec crews contain the medical ward. "I mean sure, I've killed two, destroyed the husk of another, and thwarted a twisted breeding program..." She trailed off. "Okay, yeah, I get it. But it still seems like overkill."

"No such thing," said the Doctor, leaning heavily against a nearby guardrail. "Especially for invincible legions of apocalyptic doom. You heard what it said, about you being a 'pinnacle of civilization'."

"Right," Shepard said, throwing her hands up in the air. "What the hell is that supposed to even _mean_?"

"You've got fans," Garrus deadpanned. "Maybe the Reapers will go away if you start signing autographs."

"I don't think it'll be that easy," Shepard replied.

"Oh, I think so. Just get Conrad to send them his life-size Shepard bodypillow."

The three of them took a moment to process the image and collectively shuddered.

"Speaking of never getting to sleep again ever," Shepard said, dryly. "That was some amazing thing you did back there, Doctor. I've never seen anyone beat indoctrination like that before, and you made it look easy. Are you some sort of super biotic?"

"Most likely not," said the Doctor, "because I honestly have no idea what you mean by that. And it was _not _easy."

Shepard stared. This was the second time he claimed to be ignorant of how the world worked, which was not at all possible. Not for someone who could face down a Reaper and seemingly teleport onto the most heavily defended station in the galaxy.

She thought back to her youth, and the time she had spent with her tutors and studies into Earth's greatest literature. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remained - however improbable - had to be the truth.

**Tactic: **Blunt honesty usually surprises people into telling you what you want to know. Often because honesty is such a rare thing in the universe.

"You're obviously not from this area," she said. "And you're not human."

"No, I'm not," replied the Doctor, giving her an appraising look. "Usually people dismiss the readings from their scanners, say they're on the fritz."

Shepard shook her head. "So would we, except things aren't adding up. Like how your... your _ship _arrived here. Or how you were able to just shut down that Reaper just like that."

Shepard stopped cold when the Doctor stood up and gave her the same chilling look he gave the Avatar. "You misunderstand me, Commander," he said, calmly. "I am quite simply the most powerful psychic I've ever met. My skills are surpassed only by those naturally-born with gobs of talent, which I do not have. I say this without gloating, Commander, it is simply a _fact_, because I have spent the majority of my life training this ability, and it took me everything I had to block out a signal that was being bounced across an entire _galaxy_." He turned away and stared out through the viewport at the passing traffic.

"What are you?" Shepard nearly whispered.

"I'm a Time Lord," said the Doctor, not turning around.

"What the hell is a Time Lord?" Garrus asked, snorting derisively.

The Doctor turned back around and gave them a level gaze. "Time Lords are, quite simply, the oldest and most advanced species in my universe. They watched over the whole of Time and Space. They were saviors to some civilizations, conquerers to others. They have been called the sovereigns of the three galaxies, ruling over events with an iron fist. To those who rose up against them, they were the harbingers of destruction and ruin, for everywhere they went, death would follow."

For a moment his expression was almost unreadable, a mixture of equal parts revulsion and deep longing. Then the moment passed, and his resolve settled in once again.

Shepard crossed her arms. "You keep saying 'our universe'. What do you mean by all that?"

"If I'm going to tell you that, Commander," the Doctor said, shaking his head, "we'll need a bit more time. It's a long story. But the short form is, I believe I am here for a reason, and I also believe that reason revolves around you. I'll tell you what you want to know, if you tell me one thing in return."

He met her eyes once more, and Shepard was suddenly hit with a scale of distance beyond that which she had ever comprehended.

"Tell me about these Reapers."


	4. Chapter Three: O Captain My Captain

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Chapter Three - O Captain My Captain**

All things considered, it took relatively little finagling to get the Doctor's box-ship-thing moved from Anderson's office to the hangar bay of the _Normandy_. It was convenient for the Doctor (who wouldn't travel without it), convenient for Shepard (who wanted to give her team a chance to find out what it actually was), and especially convenient for Anderson (who just wanted the damn thing _gone_). It was extremely _not_ convenient for the rest of the Council, which was really only a bonus incentive anyway, since Shepard was still rather _displeased _with their treatment of her report from the Omega Relay.

"_Honestly, Shepard, at least _try_ to see it our way here. Do you _want_ there to be wide-spread panic on something we have absolutely no hard evidence on?_"

Shepard crossed her arms and glared at the Asari Councillor. "I'm not getting into this argument again. I've done your dirty work, I did my research in private when you couldn't do it openly. You couldn't act overtly. I _get it_, don't think that I don't understand." She shook her head and focused the full force of The Shepard Glare at the Turian Councillor. "But you've got all you need. And you won't act. So again, I'm going to have to, with or without your blessing."

The Turian Councillor was unfazed. "_This includes taking this 'Doctor' and his reality-defying machinery out of our custody?_"

"You're damn right it does," said Shepard. "Appropriation of resources. Call it... _commandeering_."

The hooded salarian on the right narrowed his own eyes in response. "_Commander, your own track record-_"

"My _own track record_ has been to pull your asses out of the fire _every single time_!" Shepard snarled, slamming her fist on the conference table. "If I was any less than I had to be, you'd have died with the _Destiny Ascension_. I _saved_ your precious flagship, and all three of you with it, so don't you _dare_ give me this 'your track record' bullshit. The Doctor wants to help, and he's proven his worth to me. _End of discussion_."

The holograms flickered, for once at a loss for words.

The Asari Councillor recovered first. "_Despite our misgivings, Shepard, you've given us no reason to question your actions. We will table the discussion of the Doctor until your return._" The tendrils along the side of her head twitched. "_We await the results of your mission. Do not make our faith unfounded._"

The holograms winked out, and Shepard slumped down into her chair, releasing tension she hadn't realized was building up.

"Curious," said Professor Mordin Solus from the doorway. "Council gives you great leeway in your dealings. Irritation at both ends. Beaurocracy the cause of many ulcers, eating disorders and workplace suicides throughout the known galaxy."

He stepped forward, entering the room, and tilted his head quizzically at her expression. "Would prefer if you did not join those statistics, Shepard. Consequences to the galaxy would be... _disastrous_."

Shepard laughed ruefully. "Thanks, Mordin. More pressure. That's exactly what I need right now."

Mordin inclined his head, conceding the point. "Not meant to pressure you. Simply stating projected statistics. World is a better place with you in it."

"You're not getting all Clarence on me, are you?" Shepard raised an eyebrow. Since the initial conversation with Garrus and the Doctor, those old flatvids her mother raised her on had been on the forefront of her mind.

"Certainly not!" huffed Mordin in mock indignation. "Would _never _take that long to earn wings. Look horrible in trenchcoats." He took a deep breath and eyed Shepard speculatively. "Would also never dream of commenting on your physical similarities to George Bailey."

Shepard stared at him for a long moment before breaking into laughter. "Okay, you win, you win. Remind me never to challenge you to a trivia game."

Mordin simply inclined his head in a nod, both acknowledging the point and politely waiting for Shepard to compose herself.

"How was your session with the Doctor?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Biometrics scan was entirely confusing," Mordin said happily, his eyes gleaming. "Form, structure, all similar to human physiology. Slight organ redundancy, similar to krogan. Two hearts. Fascinating." He called up his omni-tool and scrolled through the data as he listed it off. "Much higher range of brain activity than any species on record. Similar organ structure. Simply utilizing much more of it. Bloodwork mystified me for half an hour until he swapped my samples back. Orange marmalade trick."

Shepard blinked. "Orange marmalade trick? He swapped his blood sample and you didn't realize it?"

"Time Lord entirely new species, Commander," Mordin admonished. "Any data could have been the more accurate one. Watching samples like a hawk, did not see the change happen. More impressed than annoyed."

Shepard nodded. From the short time since she had met him, she had come to realize that the Doctor only had three settings. Manic and gleeful, calm and inquisitive, and frighteningly serious. He seemed comfortable with each of those, and could apparently turn them on and off at will. The conversation about the Reapers had been the latter, for example; with every description of her experiences with the Reapers and the Collectors, he got quieter and quieter, until his gaze was a sharpened blade and the very air seemed to be electrified with the force of his fury. That was when he had asked - not demanded, _asked _- to join her in her travels, with the only request that they visit the system where they stole the IFF transponder from the destroyed Reaper. She found that she couldn't refuse him anything, not in that mood.

Immediately upon boarding the _Normandy_, however, it had been like watching a kid in a candy store. Gone was the force of nature, the transformation so complete that had she not seen it for herself, she wouldn't have believed he was the same person. She had eventually found him in Miranda's office, pestering the former executive with inane questions and baiting her much more successfully than Joker ever had (which was itself an impressive feat). She had finally managed to send him to the research bay, seconds before Miranda would have snapped and shoved him into a torpedo tube.

"So where is he now?" Shepard asked. She stood up and stretched, still feeling the tension in her joints from the argument with the Council.

"Engineering," replied Mordin. "Last I saw, trading maintenance tips with Tali'Zorah."

"Wonderful," she deadpanned. "They'll be like that for hours. Come on, Professor, let's go talk to our new shipmate."

oOoOoOoOoOo

"I mean, yes, I _have _personally been affected by the Geth," Tali was saying as Shepard and Mordin entered Engineering. "So you can see why I have issues."

Anyone who didn't know Tali would see her as multi-tasking the conversation. Shepard - who suppressed any thoughts of "maternal instincts" and instead labelled them as Big Sisterly Concerns - immediately recognized signs of discomfort and withdrawal. The girl's slightly hunched posture over the terminal she was working at, staring directly at the screen and not meeting the Doctor's gaze, the shifting of her weight from one foot to another, all of these indicated that she was not happy with the conversation.

Shepard would have stepped in at this point, but it was obvious that Tali was talking of her own volition. As socially awkward as the young quarian was, she didn't put up with people questioning her when she didn't want to be prodded. If it was something she was _truly _uncomfortable talking about, she'd have asked politely to stop, then asked again after reaching for a weapon.

It was especially obvious in comparison to the Doctor's obvious relaxation. He was leaning against the railing, one hand thrust into a pocket while the other held a steaming mug. Shepard had never seen _anyone_ look so casual; only someone with years of practice could be so comfortable in his own skin and project an aura so scientifically precise at being a lazy bum. Just looking at him was putting _Shepard _at her ease, and the only times she'd been truly at ease in the last five years were the two she'd spent dealing with that whole big death thing. (And for that matter, a smattering of little ones, but those were neither here nor there.)

"If I could give some advice, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy," said the Doctor, taking a sip from the mug and grimacing spectacularly, "just keep your mind open. It takes a lot of closed minds to start a war, but just one open mind can turn it around."

"I can't ever forget what they did to my father," grumbled Tali, her hands gripping the terminal so hard that Shepard would swear they were turning white.

The Doctor took another sip, and made another face. "God, that's vile stuff. I never said forget. You should never forget a war, that only leads to repeating it. Hallo, Shepard."

"Doctor." Shepard leaned up against a stretch of railing. "Everything going alright down here?"

"Magnificently," said the Doctor. "Your young Engineering genius was just getting me up to speed on her role on this ship. Did you know, she taught me some things about mass effect drive cores that I honestly never knew? Because blimey, just look at that thing." He gestured at the spherical core in its studded chamber. "Laurence Fishburne would have a stroke if he saw that, and no mistake."

"From what you were talking about earlier, Doctor," Shepard said, letting a playful edge drift into her tone, "I gathered you didn't know much at all about mass effect drive cores."

The Doctor gave her a sixty-watt smile. "Why do you think I needed someone of Tali's expertise to teach me?" His grin faded as he took a third sip of whatever was in that mug, this time giving a full-body shudder as he swallowed.

"What is that, and why are you still drinking it?" Shepard asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I asked your chef what the strongest tea he had was, and would you believe he didn't have any? No tea on a starship." The Doctor's cartoonish face twisted into a visage of righteous indignation. "Luckily, your pilot was walking past, and he had with him a packet of leaves from Palaven. Delightful stuff, really. Got a nasty afterkick to it, but that's just what I need right now."

Shepard sighed and hit the nearest intercom. "Joker, have you been raiding Garrus's care packages again?"

"_Commander, I am highly offended! You accuse me of stealing useless little knicknacks from Garrus's family? I have absolutely no use for his school picture day collages, or his old comic books._"

"_Along with a framed holograph of his old Academy paramour,_" EDI's tinny synthetic voice chimed in.

"_It's not my fault I wanted to see what the big deal was,_" Joker retorted, absolutely no shame in his voice. "_The way Big Blue has been harping on her lately, you'd think she was Miss Turian Porn Star 2185. Waste of time, anyway, I don't see what the big deal is._"

"He's not going to be happy when he finds out, Joker."

"_When is he ever happy, Commander?_"

"If it's a problem," interrupted the Doctor, "I can go apologise. Maybe ask for some more of this tea to take with me."

Mordin, who had been tapping furiously into his omni-tool the entire conversation, swept the scanner over the Doctor. "No signs of Dextro-Amino rejection. Fascinating. Goes completely against all known scientific study. Will need to study further."

At the Doctor's questioning glance, Shepard clarified. "Turian and quarian food makes all other species violently sick."

"Vomiting, headaches, congestion," Mordin added helpfully. He inhaled sharply. "Rectal bleeding."

"Huh." The Doctor took another sip of his tea. "More for me, then. In any case, Commander, how long until we get to that dead Reaper?"

"Keelah, we're going back to that thing?" Tali asked, turning around. Her fingers twitched. "I thought we blew that up for good."

"The Doctor wants to take a look at any sections that might still be in orbit," Shepard responded. "Hopefully not all of them fell into the planet."

"Or star," reminded Mordin.

"Or star," agreed Shepard.

"Hopefully there's nothing left and your stupid plan doesn't _work_," retorted Tali. "If we find anything, promise me we'll blow it up even more."

"I promise you we'll destroy anything we find once the Doctor's done with it," Shepard said. "We're playing this safe. And it was his plan."

"Lovely," said Tali. "Do all your plans result in everyone screaming and dying horrible deaths?"

"Not always," said the Doctor, wincing. "Well, not most of the time. The screaming part happens a lot, though. How long, Commander?" His eyebrows were raised at the repetition of his question.

"Two hours."

"Wonderful," said the Doctor. "I noticed you had a conference room on this ship. If you would gather your most trusted staff and meet me there in, say, ten minutes? I've got some things I need to tell you before we begin."

oOoOoOoOoOo

For a ship with such a military feel, the _Normandy_ was operated in a much more lenient - almost family - fashion. It was either refreshing or ominous, and it was _very_ difficult to decide which. Between the card games in Engineering, the media stream in the cockpit (to which the rather delightfully stroppy pilot half-heartedly denied was pornographic), and the swapping of stories and pictures between the crew terminals in the command level, the crew were blatantly in disregard of most naval regulations that the Doctor was familiar with. Add to that the fact that they did not stop when Commander Shepard was walking past (and for that matter, she did not seem to _care_, so long as it didn't interfere with the operation of the ship), and you had less of a crew and more of a community.

It might have been due to Shepard being a government secret operative - a Spectre, she had said, which had all sorts of worrisome supernatural connotations in itself - and it only reinforced his thought that no matter how far he travelled, people stayed the same.

The Doctor had subtly asked about that when he was swapping stories with the girl down by the engines - and what a _delight _she was, with just enough innocence rubbed off to be able to function in properly tarnished societies, but still enough infectious cheer for talking to her to be a bright spot in anyone's day. Were it not for the fact that he didn't belong in this universe, he'd have asked her to join him in a heartbeat, just to see the look of wonder cross her... helmet...

Well, perhaps he wouldn't _see _it, but he'd know it was there.

It was funny, actually. Aside from the whole "needs a full environmental suit to not die from diseases and other suchlike" thing, she reminded him of Ace. Same sarcastic-yet-generally-amused demeanor, same glee at discovering new things, same penchant for explosives...

Right, that decided that. She wasn't coming back with him, as fun as their adventures might have been.

The Doctor was interrupted from his musings when Shepard entered the conference room, followed by the group of people she considered to be her most trusted staff.

Jacob Taylor, who immediately leaned up against the wall as if he owned the place. Miranda Lawson, who actually _did _and was the type of person who wouldn't let you forget it. Mordin, Tali, and Garrus - who he was very much acquainted with - entered together, taking seats at strategic points around the table. That much was interesting to note, the Doctor realized, since they would all be in excellent position to cover themselves and each other if a fight broke out in the room. From what little interactions he'd had with the crew, it might not be all that unreasonable to assume, either.

Following them were three people who Miranda was currently unhappy with, mostly for being _successful_ in running him off when he stopped by for a chat. Samara, who had rebuffed his questions with quotations from her Code, and Grunt, who had punched him clear across the storage bay. And then, Jack. In particular, the surly, shaved, pierced, and leather-wearing girl had simply glared magnificently at him until his babbling had run out of steam and he left of his own accord. _That _had impressed him more than anything else; usually his babbling tended to feed on itself in the presence of an awkward silence, rather than peter out. He gave her a respectful nod as she entered the conference room and was not surprised to see her ignore it.

"Is this everyone, Commander?" he asked, turning back to Shepard (who had placed herself at the head of the conference table).

"Not quite," Shepard said, taking a careful glance at Tali.

The Doctor followed her gaze. Tali was tense, her eyes darting about behind the smoky purple faceplate, her fingers twitching on the tabletop. "I still don't know why you invited that thing," she spat at Shepard.

"Be nice, Tali," Shepard admonished. "Legion has proven-"

"Yes, fine, I know," Tali grumbled. "I'm _trying_, okay? You can't ask me to forgive overnight."

The Doctor was about to open his mouth and comment on this when the door to the conference room opened, and in walked-

"A robot?" exclaimed the Doctor, rushing forward to take a closer look. "Not just a servant, but you have a fully-functional robot on your team, Shepard?" He reached into his duster to pull out his spectacles, which he mainly used when getting a closer look at something. Without waiting for a response, he made two quick circles around the machine. "A combination of servos and artificial musculature. Reaction time... ooh, very good. You are a gorgeous creature, aren't you?"

The machine tilted its head and fanned out the plates surrounding its single optic head. "Insufficient data," it said after a while.

Shepard covered a chuckle with her hand. "Legion, this is the Doctor. Doctor, meet Legion. Legion is our Geth Specialist."

The Doctor blinked. "So this is a geth? Brilliant, the quarians must have spent ages developing it. And a true AI, for that matter."

Behind him, he could hear Tali clenching her hands into a fist. That's right, she had just been talking about how the geth killed her father. Sore subject, that. Best not to bring it up.

"All right, Legion, take a seat, and I'll get started." The Doctor frowned as he watched Legion stand across the table from Tali, making sure to keep its hands in full view of the quarian. It seemed to be going out of its way to avoid giving offense, and, noting that mentally, the Doctor began to outline his plan.

oOoOoOoOoOo

"Well, that could have gone worse," said Shepard as the Doctor pulled a set of cables out of the TARDIS. He made sure to keep the door at least partially closed; there were a lot of questions lately about what kind of things he was capable of, and he felt it best to avoid any awkward situations.

"Indeed, my commendations to your pilot," he replied, affixing the cables to the large chunk of blue metal now occupying the majority of the hangar bay. "I'd have thought we were too close to the atmosphere to make a safe recovery, but he certainly pulled through."

"_Aw, it was nothin', Doc,_" Joker's voice rang from the speakers. "_It's just a little baby proto-star, nothing that could seriously hurt my baby._"

"It was still impressive," said the Doctor, looking up from the bit of Reaper. "There, that should be all set."

Shepard perched herself on the edge of a supply crate, swinging her feet idly. It almost made the Doctor wonder about the teenager she must have been, and he clamped down on those thoughts as soon as he could.

It was _not _the time to get attached to people he was hopefully never going to see again. There were too many rough goodbyes in his life, no need to cause another one.

"Sorry, what was that?" he asked, realizing that Shepard had asked him a question.

"I said, what is it you're going to do with this?" she repeated, crossing her arms. (The Doctor was starting to dread when she did that, it meant that she was losing her patience.) "I don't want it on my ship any longer than it has to be."

"Don't worry, Commander," said the Doctor, reassuringly. "I'll just get my readings and you can push it out the airlock and back at the heart of the planet there."

"_Or star,_" Joker supplied helpfully.

"Or star," agreed the Doctor.

"Alright, but what are the readings _for_? Why does this matter so much to you?"

The Doctor paused, arguing with himself. It was one thing to keep things simple for primitive societies, but this was important. Besides, he might still need her help.

"Well, it's mostly because I'm here because I need to help. These Reapers concern me because 'genocide' is a four-letter word as far as I'm concerned." He blinked and ran that sentence back through his head. "We~ell, eight letter word. Twice as bad as your standard four-letter." He stood up and tested the connection to the TARDIS. The old girl hummed gently in confirmation, and he felt a grin start edging its way across his face. "Besides, you never asked the important question."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. She was really quite good at doing that, too. That and the arm-crossing would put her as the galaxy's top interrogator if she so desired. "What's the important question?" she asked.

"What a Time Lord actually is, and I'll tell you as much as I feel comfortable with." He took his spectacles off and replaced them in his coat pocket. "I'll tell you now that it isn't much. In every galactic society, we've been the meddling ancients, who built our society around a source of power and evolved accordingly. In some universes, we've been the guardians of great powers, in others we've destroyed because of it."

"You keep talking about other universes," Shepard said. "Do you mean you're from some sort of alternate dimension?"

"That is quite a wonderful explanation while being at the same time completely wrong in every detail," responded the Doctor. "But it's close enough. I was pulled through a rift between the universes, which should not have happened."

"How do you know about what the Time Lords have done in other universes, then?" countered Shepard. "If you can't travel."

The Doctor waved a hand dismissively. "It's complicated. The walls erode every so often, and I've done my share of travelling. I could tell you about a clan of us who stick to one planet and send out bits of our power to other races and use them to build up an intergalactic police force. Or a version of us that simply sits and writes down everything that happens everywhere, but that doesn't matter."

Shepard gave him an appraising look. "That explains what Mordin was talking about," she said, her voice distant.

"Why, what was he saying?"

"Something about how your DNA was recognized by the Extranet, but there was a flag on it." She hopped down off the crate.

"What do you mean, a flag?"

"_The information is heavily encrypted in the Citadel's archives._" EDI's voice filtered down from the speakers. "_A similar finding alerted the Council to the true fate of the Protheans._"

Shepard nodded. "It might mean that whatever Time Lords existed in this universe, the Reapers took them down as well."

The Doctor shook his head. "It can't be as simple as that. But that'll be another mystery our friend here will solve," he said, gesturing to the Reaper part in front of them.

"Again, how?" said Shepard as she crouched down to get a better look at the cables the Doctor had attached to it.

"Why do you think we're called Time Lords," the Doctor asked, raising his eyebrows. "I'm attuning the TARDIS to a point this Reaper was alive."

He watched carefully as Shepard's face paled. She stood up and looked him directly in the eyes. "What did you say?"

The Doctor gave his most insufferable smile. "I'm a time traveller," he said. "The TARDIS isn't all that accurate if I'm flying by feel, but if I've got a point to home in on, I can get us within two millimeters and three seconds of where we want to be. Come with me, and we'll see if we can't find what weaknesses the Reapers have."

"...how are we going to do that?" she asked, uncertainly.

"We're going to _ask_ it."


	5. Chapter Four: Non Timetus Messor

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Chapter Four - ****Non Timetus Messor**

"You're _sure_ the _Normandy _will be fine."

"Yes, Commander."

Shepard rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. The Doctor had persuaded her to leave the chunk of Reaper in the hangar bay, because - according to him, at least - there was no guarantee his ship would return to the right spatial and temporal coordinates. Something like that, at least.

She sighed and walked up to the blue box. "After you," she said, gesturing at the doors. The Doctor gave an overdramatic bow (with a hand-gesture flourish that made her roll her eyes) and stepped into the box.

"Come on," he said, his voice echoing slightly - which should really have been her first clue, since it was a cathedral-echo and not a shower-stall-echo. Suppressing her disbelief, she stepped through the open door-

-and stepped right back out, leaning around to inspect the outsides. "What."

Across the vast interior of the box, the Doctor gave one of his insufferable grins. "I do so enjoy this part. Go on, say it." He stood there expectantly.

"_What the shit is this._"

The Doctor's face fell slightly. "That's... not the usual reaction, no."

Shepard walked back into the box and swept her gaze over the circular room, easily twice the width of the _Normandy_ itself, with soft bronze and green paneling over the walls (giving it an almost organic, coral-like feeling), the central column attached to a six-panel console, stairs and metal railings, and _also more doors_. All inside a blue wooden box they loaded onto the ship with a _handcart_.

Either she had fallen and was having concussion-induced delusions, or the Doctor's claims had just gotten a whole lot more believable.

"So, alternate universe, you say?" Shepard asked, clamping down on the quaver that threatened to enter her voice.

"I suppose it was a bit much to assume that you were taking it all rather well," admitted the Doctor sheepishly.

"I _had _thought you might be hitting the red sand a bit too much," Shepard said, walking uncertainly up to the central console and inspecting its rather unusual controls. Buttons and screens she understood, but there were also dials, levers, what looked like an old handbrake, and a rubber hammer attached to a bit of string.

"I know it's a bit much to take all in one go-"

"When do we leave?" Shepard asked, turning suddenly to face the Doctor. He took an unconscious step backwards to steady himself from the force of her gaze.

"-or perhaps not," he continued lamely. "What happened to hitting the red sand?"

"Two years ago, the most I had to worry about was protecting the ship from batarian pirates and slavers. Now I'm in a race to build an army against mythological battlecruiser-sized cyborgs from the dawn of time, and they've already killed me once before." She swept her bangs out of her eyes and spun around to take another look at the almost organic flow of the Doctor's ship. "If your ship is bigger on the inside, that's fine. Just give me a minute to stop freaking out about it and we'll be ready."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "'We', Commander?"

Shepard turned on him and shot him a Look. "You want us to go thousands of years into the past-"

"Millions, actually."

"-_millions of years into the past _to talk to a Reaper and get back home safely without getting killed, turned into anachronistic future zombies, or some combination of the above?"

"Well... yes," admitted the Doctor.

Shepard gave a lopsided grin. "Then you'll need the best people for the job." She turned to leave, but a thought struck her and she stopped walking. "Just do me a favor," she said.

"What's that?" the Doctor asked.

"Let me spoil your surprise about your ship." She turned around to meet his questioning look. "These are my people, and they're a bit trigger-happy. You want to surprise them, best make sure you can regenerate."

She left the box, but before the door shut behind her, she could have sworn she heard him muttering, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that."

oOoOoOoOoOo

"Grenades."

"Check."

"Extra heat sinks and emergency coolant systems."

"Got it, Shepard."

"Backup radio units and emergency beacons."

"In the pouch."

"Grenades."

"You already said grenades."

"More grenades."

Shepard made a full round of her squad inside the TARDIS's control room, double- and triple-checking their equipment. Over to the side, Garrus and Tali were assembling spare rifles, testing every system to make sure the weapons wouldn't jam or misfire at a crucial moment. Grunt was slowly spinning in place, watching the consoles pulse in a slow, mechanical heartbeat. Mordin was...

"Fascinating. Internal structure appears to be completely aesthetic. Functionality seems to be mutable depending on the situation. Completely unorthodox."

Check. Mordin was still frozen by the doorway, scanning everything with his omni-tool that was in range. From his running commentary, his brain had kicked into overdrive at the prospect of the Doctor's ship having extradimensional abilities.

"I think you broke him, Doc," Jack said from her perch on the upper railing. "He's been blabbering since we got here."

The Doctor's smarmy grin had returned. Despite Shepard's warnings, the reactions of her crew as they piled into the blue box had been a range of wonder to confusion and disbelief, and had apparently sated the Time Lord's nigh-inexhaustible need for attention. Though she had a distinct feeling it wouldn't last, he was at least satisfied for the moment and was focusing on whatever settings needed to be changed in his ship.

"Mm? Oh, yes. It'll pass." He looked up, his spectacles once again adorning his face. "Miss Jacqueline, was it?"

"It's Jack. Just Jack."

"Well, Just Jack, I must say I'm surprised you're coming with." The Doctor peered at her over his glasses. "I was under the impression you didn't like me very much."

Shepard smirked at this, trying not to look like she was eavesdropping. She kept her gaze firmly on Mordin, who was still scanning the room and going on about "extra-dimensional holding space, possible relationship to proposed Bag of Holding technology? Must inquire further."

"I don't like anyone very much," Jack was saying, putting up her best affectation of disinterest. Shepard had known her long enough to figure out this was a front, that she actually did want to be pushed just a bit farther, because the girl didn't know how to strike up conversation on her own.

"Oh, I can understand that," said the Doctor, turning back to the console and giving her a sly glance. "But that gets a bit boring, doesn't it? So tell me, Miss Jack, what changed your mind?"

"I can't figure out your angle," Jack admitted, dropping her gaze.

Shepard blinked, taken aback. Apparently the Doctor had Jack pegged from moment one, and knew exactly how to talk to deranged and socially-inept girls.

"What makes you think I've got an angle?" asked the Doctor.

"Everyone's got an angle if you look hard enough," responded Jack. "Most people are in it for sex, or money, or drugs. Or all three at once. Which are you?"

"Oh, certainly not drugs," said the Doctor. "Don't have a lot of use for money. I can usually find what I need, and the TARDIS keeps herself stocked whenever I get a bit peckish."

"And sex?"

"I'd imagine Susan would have a bit to say about that," said the Doctor, thrusting his hands in his pockets and leaning against the console.

Jack leered. "Who's that, your wife? I don't see her around."

"Granddaughter." At Jack's stunned silence, he pressed on. "The thing is, Jack, there's a lot more to the universe than cheap thrills and revenge. I know you've had a rough life so far, but that doesn't mean you have to settle. Look at Shepard over there." He nodded his head to where Shepard was unabashedly listening in. "Known her less than two days and already I know there's a lot more to her than she claims to be. You know what her 'angle' is?"

Jack shrugged. "Same reason she went and pulled Lawson and her ship out from under Cerberus. Save the cheerleader, save the world."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. "You'd be wrong about that, I'd suppose, but I can't speak for her any more than you can, any more than I can speak for you. What's _your _angle here?"

"Fun," Jack said automatically. "Blow up giant space bugs and party 'till I puke."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?" Without waiting for a response, the Doctor stepped away from the console and over to the wall Shepard was hunkered down. "Commander, will you be ready to go soon?"

Shepard took one last glance at Jack, who was still sitting on the railing and staring down at the metal floor. "Just about," she said. "Garrus, is the failsafe set?"

The lean turian snapped his mandibles in affirmation. "Ready, Shepard. The moment the guns register decreased alpha wave patterns, the safeties will lock. It won't prevent us from going haywire, but it'll give the rest of us a couple seconds to make sure whoever's being zombified is out of the game."

"And that'll work, will it?" Shepard asked.

"Who knows?" Garrus responded, shrugging his shoulders in a very human fashion. Shepard knew he did that mostly for her benefit, since turian gestures were more subtle. "I'll be happy if we don't all turn three seconds after arriving. Beyond that, I'll take what I can get."

Shepard nodded. "Looks like we're all set, then. If we're not back in six hours, Joker's going to head straight for Earth to report our deaths."

"Oh, you're a cheerful one," said the Doctor. He got back to his feet and headed for the central console, flitting around it like a hummingbird to flip switches and turn dials all over its face. "Right then, let's get cracking. _Allons-y_!"

With a muffled thud and a metallic scraping noise, the blue box faded out of existence.

oOoOoOoOoOo

The TARDIS rematerialized with a thump, and the familiar _vworp vworp vworp _of its engine faded into nothingness.

"Is it always this noisy?" asked Garrus, affixing his eyepiece to his head.

The Doctor rolled his eyes as he locked down the console. "What, that? It's not so bad, just a bit of the time vortex rubbing against the fabric of reality and tearing a hole right through it. You know, everyday stuff."

"All I'm saying is, I could feel that in my teeth." The turian snapped open his assault rifle and chambered a heatsink.

"You don't have teeth," Shepard said absently, doing a final inspection on her own gear. "You've got those cutting mandible things."

"And I could feel it through them," said Garrus, his stance daring Shepard to comment further. It was wasted, though, since she was facing the complete opposite direction.

Shepard stood up and turned towards her - for lack of a better term - troops. Because that's what they were, the Doctor realized, regardless of being a mish-mash of cultures and loyalties and various levels of legality; Shepard had taken these people and turned them into her squad. As sarcastic as they got, the respect was palpable.

"Alright, listen up," she said, her voice not even raised but commanding attention all the same. "We've got one shot at this, so here's what I need. The Doctor, Miranda and I will be taking point, heading towards the Reaper's command cluster. Doctor, have you pulled up schematics yet?"

"I've got the ones you had from before," said the Doctor. His hands flew over the keyboards, trying to break into the positronic neural network of the Reaper. "This one's a bit... oh, no, there we go. Control cluster is deck 53, zone 6, section 3. Sending to your little hand-computer-device things."

Shepard nodded and called up the blueprints on her omni-tool. An orange holographic wireframe floated in the air, and she traced a passageway with her finger, highlighting the path in red.

"The first thing to do is keep this chamber secure," she said, zooming in on the boxy depression the blinking blue representation of the TARDIS had materialized in. "Samara, Grunt. You'll keep a perimeter, prevent anything from reaching the Tortoise."

"TARDIS," the Doctor interrupted. "It's the TARDIS, it stands for Time and Relative..." He trailed under the weight of Shepard's Glare. "Well, that's not important. Anyway, yes, it is absolutely vital you do not let anything inside. If all else fails, you can shut yourselves in; as long as I'm alive, the TARDIS will be protected against anything attacking it. Yes, Miss vas Normandy?"

Tali lowered her hand. "No offense, Doctor, but the outside of your ship is made of wood. How is that secure?"

The Doctor waved his hands dismissively. "It's not wood, it just looks like it. Not important how. That door could withstand assault by Attila the Hun and his combined armies."

Tali tilted her head and placed her hand on her hip. "I highly doubt it," she said, dryly.

"Don't see why, it happened twice," said the Doctor.

"But-"

Shepard gave a loud whistle, interrupting the impending tirade. "Tali, I know you want to know how many laws of physics the Doctor breaks on a daily basis, but now is _not the time_. On that note, I need you here in the TARDIS covering our exit. The Doctor will show you what you need to do."

Tali froze, her left hand twitching at the thought. "Objection withdrawn," she said, and the Doctor _knew _that if he could see her face, he'd be slightly worried right now.

"Garrus, Legion," Shepard continued, "I want you to find a foothold here and here-" she highlighted a pair of catwalks lining the path "-and cover the three of us. Even if you can't get clear shots, I need as much warning as possible if something's heading our way."

Garrus nodded. "Orders confirmed, Shepard-Commander," added Legion, loading his sniper rifle with an audible click.

"That leaves Jack, and Jacob," finished Shepard. "Rearguard. Follow behind us and cover our six."

Three brief nods answered the unspoken question, and Shepard clicked the safety off her sidearm. "Any last questions?"

The Doctor grimaced. "Just checking, are all the guns necessary? What if there are surviving victims aboard?"

"I've dealt with Reapers before, Doctor. Anything that's onboard hasn't been sentient for a while, and anything that still is deserves peace." Shepard offered him a spare pistol, which he once again declined. "Stay close to us, don't run off without me and I won't run off without you. Clear?"

"Crystal," said the Doctor, slipping on his favorite jacket. A quick perusal of the pockets confirmed the presence of his screwdriver, a few leftover ornaments from last Christmas, and the remote that went along with it. "I'm ready when you are."

At Shepard's nod, he swung open the door and stepped out into the darkened underbelly of a Reaper.

oOoOoOoOoOo

The first thing that Shepard noticed was the stench. She had her atmospheric-combat helmet on, as the Doctor hadn't even put on a pressure suit (let alone armor of any kind), and the cloyingly sweet scent of decay assaulted her nose the moment she stepped out into the Reaper. A hint of rotting meat, mixed with mechanical lubricants and the tang of ozone, which reminded her (as if she could forget) that she was inside a biomechanical monstrosity.

The second thing she noticed was the damage. Bulkheads shattered and stressed, the floor and ceiling covered in carbon scoring and ash. A quick sweep of the chamber with her flashlight confirmed that it was the same all over, at least all that she could see.

"You said we were coming back to when this thing was alive?" she asked, edging forward cautiously.

"I double-checked the coordinates six times," said the Doctor. "The TARDIS comes out wrong when I don't pay too much attention, but she always listens to me when I'm being careful in controlling her."

He spun around slowly, illuminating the crevices of the chamber as he turned. "What are you trying to show me, my girl?" he said, in almost a whisper. "What is it I'm missing?"

As the rest of her squad filed out of the box - and what a sight _that _was; she'd laugh at the absurdity of it if she wasn't so on edge - Shepard gave the signal to spread out. Legion and Garrus hastened to opposite sides of the doorway, ready to disappear into whatever catwalks or ductwork they could find.

Miranda dropped into Shepard's shadow. "Do you know what year it is, Doctor? Assuming we dropped into the wrong one."

The Doctor shook his head and pulled out his silver multi-tool thing. "No," he said. "Sometime after it was attacked, but not long after. It's still alive, but it's weak." He turned the tool on and waved it about - its high-pitched whirring noise causing Legion to stop in his tracks and stare at it - before turning it off again. "Weak, but not defenseless. We'd best get a move on, Commander."

Shepard nodded, and the three of them made their way down the hallway. Every so often, they would pause at something; a gargantuan creaking noise as the Reaper settled into orbit, or a rather tense moment when Garrus accidentally knocked loose a panel and they froze, listening to it clatter down a near-bottomless pit ("Easy there, Pippin," the Doctor had muttered as they anxiously awaited a response).

It wasn't until they came to the doorway to the control room that the Doctor himself signaled for a halt. He was staring in horror at the symbols on the door, all color draining from his face. "No, it can't be. It can't possibly be."

Shepard leaned in to get a closer look. "'Control Room, Unit 5363, Tertiary Adjucator'. This is where you wanted to be, right?"

Miranda leaned in, her eyes locked on the entryway they just went through, keeping her gun in position to cover their rear arc. "What, is it written in English?"

"Looks like..." Shepard started to say, before frowning and taking a closer look. "I can't tell."

"You can't _tell_?" Miranda asked, her voice reaching upper octaves in mocking disbelief. "Either it's English or it's not, and I _highly _doubt it would be written in English millions of years in the past."

Shepard squinted, trying to make sense of the writing on the door. "I can understand it, and I'm seeing it in English, but now that I'm looking at it, it's some sort of... circles?"

"High Gallifreyan," said the Doctor. His voice was faint, as if coming from far away. "The language of my people."

"How can I understand High Gallifreyan?" asked Shepard.

"That's a good question," said the Doctor, giving her an appraising look. "The TARDIS shouldn't... ah well."

Shepard gave him a Look. "The TARDIS shouldn't what?"

"Translate it for you," said the Doctor, almost automatically. "Gets in your head, helps you understand where and when you are. Normal procedure. The more important question is, what's High Gallifreyan doing on... no. No, no no no."

Shepard whirled about as the Doctor grabbed tufts of his unruly hair. "Doctor, if you're going to have a freak-out, this is _not the time_."

He spun in place, his eyes wild and deranged. "But of course, it all makes sense, it makes _perfect_ sense, why _wouldn't _they be the biggest and the baddest thing in the universe? They always were before."

"He's losing it," said Miranda, her voice icy. "Reaper must be affecting him. We should send him back and go on alone."

Shepard shook her head. "No. We came this way for him, we can keep going. Doctor, are you together?"

"Unfortunately not, Commander," said the Doctor, with a manic grin twisting his features into a grisly rictus of questionable sanity. "But I'm still with you, and I have even _more_important questions to answer." He forced his features into something resembling grim determination, and reached for the door controls.

The door slid open, and the three of them came face to face with a mass of unfolding figures, blue and red lights winking into existence as a horde of cybernetic zombies came online. As one, the mob turned towards the door, opened their mouths (mandibles, mouthparts, many variations on the same) and began to howl.

Shepard hit the door control and slammed it shut. She turned to the Doctor and Miranda. "We're leaving."

oOoOoOoOoOo

The sound of gunfire snapped Tali to full attention, the shock sending her heart racing and the diagnostics on her suit screaming in distress. She silenced the alert and grabbed her shotgun. "We've got company!" she shouted, peeking out the doors of the Doctor's miraculous ship. It astonished her, the size of it, crammed into a tiny wooden box, but as much as she had wanted to explore and scan and catalogue and tinker, she had been strong and kept watch.

"I know!" yelled Grunt gleefully. "I was wondering when this was going to happen."

"Only a child looks forward to a fight," Samara responded, calmly gathering biotic energy into her hands.

"Only an Asari treats combat as a sacred duty," Grunt countered. "I came along for one reason, and it wasn't to debate with you."

Tali expertly flicked the safety off her weapon and set the output for incendiary. "Cool it," she hissed, turning on her suit's motion detectors. "If there's gunfire, there's trouble, and I'd rather be out safely."

Grunt glared his best beady-eyed krogan glare, but kept his mouth shut and trained his own weapon on the entrance.

It wasn't long until the forward teams came rushing back to the ship, running sideways and firing wildly down the corridor. The Doctor was in the lead, practically diving through the TARDIS doors and ushering everyone else inside. He ran for the center console as soon as Shepard was through the doors, keeping a steady stream of suppressing fire as the Doctor screamed at her to shut the doors.

Quick as a flash, Tali was at the console too, helping the Doctor start up the TARDIS's systems. He gave her a calculating gaze but said nothing as she figured out the sequences for shielding, engine startup, and fumbled through a connection to what the computer had listed as the "Time Vortex". She wasn't exactly sure what it was, but it sounded right, and the Doctor glanced at her screen and nodded so she must have chosen the right thing.

Shepard slammed the door and pressed her back to it. "Sorry about the mission, Doc, but we need to get moving!"

At those words, the TARDIS went dark, the thrumming of its engines fading to nothingness.

"No, no no no no," wailed the Doctor, pressing buttons and throwing switches furiously. "Not now, don't do this to me now! Come on, love, you've always been there for me."

The TARDIS gave a coughing wheeze, and fell silent once more. The only sounds were the frenzied thumping of fists on the walls outside.

One by one, the team's floodlights flickered on, illuminating the darkened interior. "Now would be a very good time to leave," said Garrus, turning his rifle to the doors.

The thumping ceased. The central consoles flickered, and a projector lens flared to life. A holographic wireframe of a twitching, multi-limbed beast materialized inside the TARDIS, its sickly green light confirming the worst of Tali's fears.

She used to have nightmares about singular optics and metal hands, of marching mechanical armies overtaking the Flotilla and ejecting everyone into the cold darkness of space. The geth had been her personal bogeymen for years, until she went on her Pilgrimage... and found out just what true terror was. Ever since then, her nightmares centered around wireframe crustaceans, of gargantuan creatures with glowing eyes and impenetrable shells. Every night, there was a reverberating distorted voice that sized her up and declared her unworthy of existence.

**"R-RUN AWAY YOU C-C-CANNOT AWAY YOU RUN CANNOTOTOTOT. DEATH IS DEATH WHAT WE DEATH BRING TO DEATH."**

Shepard lowered her rifle and took her helmet off. "It's fractured. Whatever destroyed it must have scrambled its mind. It's insane."

**"WE ARE DESTRUCTION THE CLEANSING ARMIES DEATH YOU WILL DIE."**

The Doctor's face, awash in the green glow of the Reaper's avatar, twisted into a snarl. "Even in death, it's strong enough to hijack my ship. What are you?"

**"WE ARE BEGINNING THE END OF BEGINNING ALL THINGS. FINALITY ALL THINGS MUST END DESTRUCTION BUT WE ARE ETERNAL. WHAT YET LIVES MAY NEVER DIE DIE DIE DIEDIEDIEDIE-"**

"Shut it," snapped the Doctor. "I don't care what you think of yourself. I want to know _what you are_. How you could have fallen so far."

Tali blinked. "Doctor? What are you talking about?"

"All throughout the multiverse, there has been one constant," the Doctor continued, ignoring Tali. "One race that existed at the very beginning, that found the greatest power of the cosmos and evolved around it. And that's what you've done, haven't you? You found something and evolved into these...these _things_, and you think it's _right_, don't you?"

**"ALL THINGS EXIST TO SERVICE US. WE ARE YOUR BEGINNING END IS YOUR BEGINNING DEATH DESTRUCTION IS WHAT WE BRING."**

Shepard glanced between the Doctor and the Reaper. "The writing on the wall. Doctor, the Reapers didn't conquer the Time Lords..."

"The Reapers _are_the Time Lords," finished the Doctor. "Without the Time Vortex, they found some other power, and used it."

The Reaper seemed to hesitate. **"YOU ARE FAMILIAR."**

The Doctor's fury, Tali discovered, was a terrible thing to behold. His face could normally be called handsome, but now it was poisoned with hatred and rage. "I am _nothing _like you. I am a Time Lord, from the planet of Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. I have acted as a beacon of life, of wonder, of knowledge. But you, you were the Reaper that was felled by your own harvest! Instead of learning, you devoured. Instead of teaching, you destroyed. What you had wasn't enough, so you had to take it all!"

He twisted back to the console and started pounding furiously at a keyboard. "Your time has run out. You're dying, you're _already dead_, and you won't take us with you."

**"DOING ARE WHAT YOU ARE YOU DOING? IT WILL NOT WORK DEATH IS YOUR ONLY FUTURE DEATH."**

The pounding on the walls of the TARDIS picked back up. Tali could _feel _the ship trembling. "Doctor..."

"You've trapped me in here, I'll give you that," said the Doctor, not looking at the wireframe Reaper. "And you've somehow tapped into my computers, but that link goes both ways! I know how you've gotten in, which means..."

He flipped a switch with a flourish, and the TARDIS lit up with its own soft yellow glow.

The Reaper screamed in... pain? "**DEATH PAIN YOU WILL DIE DESTRUCTION IS YOUR ONLY-"**

The Doctor looked almost gleeful, and Tali wasn't sure if that was less frightening than the cold fury. "You've been trapped, my friend," said the Doctor. "You extended your consciousness - we~ell, what's left of it - and I shut the doors behind you. You exist at _my _mercy now!"

**"MERCY DEATH PAIN KILL ME IF YOU MUST BUT YOU WILL DIE SCREAMING"**

"_I don't think so_." As quickly as it had appeared, the grin was gone from the Doctor's face, leaving only stone. "You deserve _no_ mercy! No justice! I've destroyed you once before, and I can do it again! You don't deserve an execution, only... only _extermination_!"

"Doctor."

"_What._" The Doctor whirled around to face Shepard, who had stepped directly into his personal space. She didn't step backwards when confronted with the full force of his fury. She didn't even flinch. She just calmly stared into his eyes and waited.

Tali could see the fire draining from him. "You're right," he said, eventually, slumping his shoulders. He flicked a switch, and the hologram shattered into a million fragments, disappearing without a trace.

Not even Jack had a comment to make. The control room was silent as the grave as the Doctor fired up the engines and plotted a course back to the _Normandy_.


	6. Chapter Five: That Awkward Moment When

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Chapter Five - That Awkward Moment When**

The TARDIS landed with a thump, and the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief as he set the brakes. The wibbly detector sensor thing was reading the presence of the usual space-time rift. It was noticeably diminished, barely enough to let a trickle of power flow into the capacitors, but it was _there_which meant that even as so many different things changed, some things would always stay the same.

It was small comfort right then, but he'd take what he could get.

"Alright, people," he said, clapping his hands together excitedly, "we're taking a brief pit stop to refuel the TARDIS. Right now we're in Cardiff, early twenty-first century, so anyone _not_ human I must ask that you please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times. Anyone that _is_ human, if you were to go outside, just remember that you're dressed like complete _loons_, though that never stopped me before so I'd be a massive hypocrite if I told you not to pop out for a jammy dodger or else. Any questions?" He was staring directly at Shepard as he asked that last bit, but she kept up her rather impressive portrayal of a statue, her gaze never wavering from his face. He couldn't blame her, really, and there would probably be awkward questions later on, but that couldn't be helped.

"I've got a question, Doc," said the overly-muscled black man who was leaning casually up against yet another wall. (Really, the Doctor was amazed he didn't have some sort of back problem from never standing straight a day in his life.)

"Yes, Jacob, I'm all ears."

Jacob Taylor crossed his arms and - yep, no, there he went - settled into an even more relaxed position. "Didn't we tell Joker to report to the Fleet if we weren't back within the hour?"

"We most certainly did," said the Doctor, unable to stop his face from slipping into feigned ignorance. "We distinctly remember the Commander telling him just that. Why do we ask?"

The slight flicker of annoyance in Jacob's face only heightened the Doctor's delight. "How long are we going to be sitting here on Earth in the past?"

"About two hours," said the Doctor. "And I really had better start recharging, since the Vortex is not nearly as powerful in this dimension."

"You don't see how I'd be a bit concerned about this, then?" Jacob growled, pushing off from the wall to stalk closer to the Doctor.

"Look at that, you can stand up straight," the Doctor mused. "I don't see the problem. Do any of you see a problem?"

He was met by blank stares. "Oh, for Pete's sake, you people!" he huffed in exasperation. "Do I _look_ like George Carlin? You're standing in a _time machine_. We'll be back to the _Normandy_ before you can spit. _And don't spit_, you wouldn't believe how hard that is to clean out of upholstry."

"What upholstry?" asked Garrus, smirking. (At least, the Doctor thought he was smirking. It was hard to tell.) "I don't see anything upholstered in here."

"That's how hard it is to clean," replied the Doctor, turning back to the readouts. "You lot might as well get comfortable, we'll be here a while."

oOoOoOoOoOo

It wasn't long before he felt a presence hovering over his shoulder. It was quickly becoming familiar, that glorious balance between a short fuse and indefinite patience. Here goes that awkward conversation, he thought.

"Hello, Commander, what can I do for you?" he said, not turning around. He continued to study the readouts on his screen as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world to him - which, technically and for certain reasons, they were.

"You mind telling me what that was all about?" asked Shepard. Her voice had gained an edge of steel, and he turned around almost involuntarily.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Killing the Reaper? The bit about Time Lords?"

"All of it," said Shepard, flatly. She brushed her bangs out of her hair and crossed her arms, giving him one of her patented Shepard Glares. They almost seemed to be a default state of being for the woman, and it intrigued him so.

"Right. That's a bit of a story, then. Shall we take a walk?" He gestured towards the door to the outside. "I'd change first, by the way. No need to scare your ancestors."

And so it came to be that the Doctor was walking the streets of Cardiff with yet another woman, who despite looking distinctly uncomfortable in what she kept referring to as "civvies" - a rather tasteful jacket, jeans, and boots from the Wardrobe that looked rather like a set that Martha had often borrowed - still managed to fit into the world as if she belonged. That's what constantly amazed him about humans.

"That's what constantly amazes me about humans," he said, strolling along and noting the differences in architechture from his own dimension. For one, there were a lot more American-style coffee shops.

"What are you talking about?" said Shepard, her gaze still sweeping the street for possible threats.

"Calm down," the Doctor said, grinning. "You look like you're casing the joint. Just relax and enjoy some history." His exuberance faded slightly as he saw Shepard growing more and more uncomfortable in her surroundings. "Look, it's fine. We'll head over to Kara's and get a cuppa, that'll be nice."

He directed her towards the nearest coffee shop, grabbed the attention of the barista, and whipped out his little leather wallet and flashed it in front of the girl's face. "Good morning! Hi! I'm Special Inspector Smith, this is Inspector Shepard, be a dear and bring us two large venti mocha whatsits over at that table over there, would you?"

The girl nodded her understanding of the order and set to work preparing their order. Shepard raised an eyebrow. "What, you've got a special Time Lord thing to hypnotize people into giving you free coffee?"

"I am incredibly offended, Commander," said the Doctor, taking a seat. "What do you think I am, some sort of charletan? I use it to get doughnuts and biscuits and tea. This is for _you_." He held up the wallet. "Psychic paper. We~ell, _slightly _psychic. Probably wouldn't work on your asari friend, but most humans are just receptive enough for it to work."

Shepard shook her head. "I still have trouble trying to understand all of this. And you never answered my question."

"Oh, about being amazed? It's true." The Doctor beamed at the shopgirl as she brought the coffees over. "For one, you can take just about anything with caffeine in it and turn it into gourmet liquid gold. Would you smell that? Cinnamon. In _coffee_. I've been all over the universe in just about every era you can think of, and nobody ever thought to put cinnamon in coffee. Genius."

Shepard glared at him. "Great. Let's call the Reapers now and tell them to surrender, we've got cinnamon coffee."

The Doctor sighed. "Look at that, you keep sassing at me when you ask a question and you'll miss the answer. My point, Shepard - look, do you have a first name, 'cause it's awkward just calling you 'Commander' all the time."

"I don't know, _Doctor_," said Shepard pointedly, "I hadn't noticed how awkward it is."

The Doctor exaggerated a wince and placed his hand over his left heart, acknowledging the point. "Fair enough, fair enough. Anyway, my _point_ is that you are infinitely adaptable. More than any other species I've ever seen, you've got _potential_." He turned to look out the window at the passersby on the streets outside. "Just look, all these people living in their own worlds, working day to day just to make ends meet. If you were to walk outside and tell them that in less than two hundred years, they'd be one of the four main powers of the galaxy, they'd laugh and laugh, but that's how it is. I bet that it wasn't all that long ago that you thought you were alone in the stars."

Shepard leaned back in her chair. "You remember Councillor Anderson? He fought in the First Contact War with the turians. That was the first we'd ever seen of any aliens."

"What, David Anderson with the smooth chocolate voice? He can't be all that old, even!" The Doctor sighed wistfully. "That's you humans in a nutshell. You punched 'em in the nose and now you're friends. That Garrus bloke looks up to you, probably more than any turian he's ever known."

Shepard nodded, and the Doctor noticed that while it was without a hint of modesty, it was also without any trace of arrogance. It was just a fact, and Shepard was obviously not one to downplay something that was obviously true. "He's been with me a while, since Saren and Sovereign. Almost three years by his clock."

"And he's still with you, which means that he's also an excellent judge of character," the Doctor agreed. "But that's just adding to my point, Commander. In just a few decades, you've become a major power in the galaxy. After that, who knows? You've got potential to rival anything at all, and that's what I love about you."

"What about Time Lords?" countered Shepard. "Powerful beings in every universe? Doesn't that give them more potential?"

The Doctor sighed again. "No. We're arrogant because we've been on top, but that's only because of circumstances. We've always altered ourselves to _be _the strongest, the cleverest, the best, and Gallifrey has never considered anyone else to be allies. The most you could say was circumstancial treaties."

They were silent for a while, just watching ghosts of the past walk by their window.

"Doctor," said Shepard, putting her coffee down. "What did you mean when you said you've destroyed them once before?"

And there it was. The damned elephant in the room. They'd danced around it for a while, but it was time to pay the piper. Or... something that wasn't mixing metaphors like that.

"There was a war," said the Doctor. "I won't get into the specifics because it was long, and complicated, and seemed to be connected to almost my entire life sometimes, but the Time Lords were losing. And I don't just mean the war. They were losing themselves, and I had to make a choice. If they lost the war, the universe would be destroyed. If they won, it would have destroyed _everything_. So I ended the war."

"You... _ended _the war."

The Doctor said nothing. He just looked into her face, her wonderfully human face, full of questions and confusion, and for just a moment, he saw something familiar in her features. Some glimmer of understanding, of sorrow and loss.

"Jane," she said, picking up her coffee again and taking a long sip.

"What?"

"My name," said Shepard. "Jane. Although it doesn't really matter, since the only person who calls me that these days is my mother. Are you supposed to be telling me all this?"

"Oh, probably not," said the Doctor with fake cheer. "But you know, I'm already interfering with this universe, what's a little more information?"

"Do you do this a lot, then?" asked Shepard. "Swoop in and save humanity from the big bad monsters?"

"More than you can imagine," said the Doctor dryly. "I never really set out to do it, but it seems everywhere I go, you lot are always getting into trouble. I swear, I'll never get done saving you."

"We'll try not to let you down, then," Shepard said. She stood up and extended a hand. "For what it's worth, Doctor, I think you did the right thing."

"It doesn't make it any easier," said the Doctor. He grabbed Shepard's hand and allowed her to help him to his feet.

"Good," she said. "Because if it did, I'd be gunning for _you _next, you big space squid."

The Doctor gave her a sad smile. "If it ever did, Jane Shepard, I'd ask you to." The flicker of understanding passed between them once more, and he nodded. "Right. The TARDIS should be about charged now. Let's head back."

oOoOoOoOoOo

On their way back to the TARDIS, the Doctor and Shepard were much more subdued, but it was a comfortable, almost - dare he say it - a companionable silence. Sure, he'd left out a lot; the horrors of actually fighting in the Time War, the conspiracies and terror of the cold war that preceded it, it all had left a mark on his soul. Even the rather ingenius way he decided to end the war, which he was still somewhat ashamed of being just a tiny bit proud of, as disgusting as it made him feel. But Shepard (he was having a hard time thinking of her as "Jane", which was probably the point) didn't need to know the gritty details, just that it _happened_, and she seemed perfectly content with the broad knowledge. After all, she knew it was bad, she knew he was dangerous, and she knew it ate him up inside, every night.

The look she had given him before leaving the Kara's (and what an ironic title that establishment had!) told him that she understood the correlation between duty and sacrifice. And hell, maybe she did. She'd mentioned the Reapers killing her once before, and _that _was a story he'd need to hear sometime.

He gave her an appraising glance as they walked, watching her gait. She even _moved_ like a soldier; efficient stride, rigid posture, eyes firmly locked ahead. She was so assured of herself, what her body was capable of, what _she_was capable of. It was attractive, he recognized in his own encyclopaedic way, the way she carried herself. If she was a bit less soldiery, and he a few hundred years younger, he might have been entertaining thoughts, but the Doctor of now simply noted his observation, filed it under "useful knowledge to have", and stored it away.

At least, that's what he told himself he was doing. He lied to himself a lot, almost as much as he lied to other people, but at least he was _honest _about lying. And if he was being honest about lying, he'd accept that not for the first time, he was wondering what it would be like travelling the cosmos with Jane Shepard. She would be a unique travelling companion, with yet another fresh perspective on the wonders of the cosmos. She'd be tough like Leela, as sarcastic as Sarah Jane, as intelligent as Romana or Martha. He wondered how she'd fare against the Cybermen or Daleks, as many of his companions ended up doing. Would she run one over with a lorry? Smash it to pieces with a baseball bat? Most likely, she'd just shoot it until it ran away.

The Doctor sighed, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets as they walked along the streets of Cardiff. Wondrous times never to happen. He shouldn't get his hopes up, his hearts have been broken before. He'd fix things here, get to the crack in the universe, and make his way home before it sealed up again.

Another goodbye to run away from. Another life he'd be making better by simply not being in it.

"Look at yourself," he mumbled. "You're getting maudlin in your old age."

"Sorry?" asked Shepard, turning her head to face him. "Did you say something?"

"Nothing at all, Commander," said the Doctor, cheerfully. "Just talking to myself, like a loony old man. Never mind me."

"I'll try not to," said Shepard, smirking. "We'll have plenty of-oh no."

"What?" asked the Doctor, slipping into his worry face. "Everything alright?"

"What are they...? I thought you told them to stay in the TARDIS!"

The Doctor followed her line of sight. Across the street, next to the familiar blue box, were a pair of figures in heavy blue armor. One - hulking and broad - was swinging children around on his biceps, while the other - lanky and thin - was rushing around trying to shoo the laughing kids away.

Without a word, and in perfect synchronization, the Doctor and Shepard broke into a run.

oOoOoOoOoOo

"The mighty krogan battlemaster must always be ready to shoulder any load," Grunt was saying as he loaded another three children onto his outstretched arm. "There was a time when the Battlemaster Urdnot Wrex carried five of his squadmates out of the crumbled wreckage of the Citadel Tower, and did he complain? No!"

"Really, kids, I'm sure you have to be in school right now," Garrus was saying, attempting to pry a rather clingy girl off Grunt's right leg. The fact that Grunt was trotting at a respectable pace around the park wasn't helping any matters.

Shepard sighed as she and the Doctor slowed down in front of them. "Grunt. Garrus. What are you doing?"

"Don't look at me, Shepard," said Garrus, shaking his head. "Grunt said he was hungry, and we couldn't stop him from leaving."

"Hungry?" exclaimed the Doctor, his voice rising at least three octaves. "_Hungry? _The TARDIS has a fully-stocked pantry, with whatever you want!" He paused, frowning. "Except Wheatabix. I always have to buy that on my own."

"Honestly, don't you humans have parents?" lamented Garrus, successfully pulling the girl off of Grunt and setting her on the ground.

Shepard crossed her arms. First coffee with a time-travelling interdimensional alien, and now her brute squad was playing jungle gym. That headache was coming back, she could feel it. "Grunt," she said, forcing her Battlemaster tone into her voice, "what are you doing?"

"Training," said Grunt, reluctantly lowering the other children to the ground. They gave a collective moan of compaint, but scampered over to the fence.

"What do you mean, _training_?"

One thing that Shepard could say about Grunt, he knew when to push her and when to back down, and he recognized that this was one of the latter times. "I was getting restless inside, and I came out here and these kids were running around asking me if I was a space man. I said yes, and they attacked me. So I spun them around and they kept coming."

The Doctor snapped his fingers. "That reminds me. Kids!" He whirled on the group of children over by the fence. "As I'm sure you've guessed, we're filming a bit of a surprise for the BBC. They're doing a... _Star Trek _thing... with Benedict Cumberbatch. Isn't that exciting?"

"_Yeah!_"

"But we have to go back on set now, so we need you all to be very quiet while we start up some very special movie effects. It'll be loud and noisy, but it's all wires and mirrors, don't you worry."

The Doctor motioned Shepard, Grunt and Garrus back into the TARDIS. Shepard paused by the door and held it open for the Doctor, who was waving off autographs as he staggered in and shut the door behind them.

"Well, that was exciting," he said, making his way to the center console. "Everyone else inside? No nasty surprises back in the U.K.?"

Shepard did a quick head count. "Everyone's on board," she said.

"Good," said the Doctor, turning a hand-crank. "Then it's time you lot got back to your ship."

The engines started up their by-now familiar scraping noise, and it wasn't long until the TARDIS made its final _thud_and the Doctor cranked the hand-crank back to its initial position.

Shepard's comm crackled. "_Shepard? Is that you? EDI's been reporting a surge of electrostatic whosits in the hangar bay._"

The familiar voice struck a chord in the TARDIS's control room, and everybody seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Shepard herself felt a weight off her shoulders that she didn't realize had built up there; it was one thing to say you'll be back in your own time and place, and visiting the past was really quite interesting, but only her time had Joker.

"We're here, Joker. Mission completed."

"_Oh thank god_," replied Joker, his own relief evident in his voice. "_It's been hell over here without you guys, let me tell you. First off, you might want to brace yourself, 'cause we got a visitor right after you left._"

Shepard, since she was closest to the door, grabbed her gear and let herself out into her own ship. "If you let them on board, there's probably a reason for it," she said. "Tell them that I'll see them in-"

She stopped dead. Tali bumped into her, not noticing that she had stopped, but Shepard paid her no mind. Her attention was locked fully on the chiseled jawline and regulation haircut of the man in front of her.

"Shepard," he greeted her. "It's been a long time."

His words sent a shock of ice down her spine. She clenched her fists and willed herself not to leap at him - whether to strike him or embrace him, she had no idea, and probably wouldn't until halfway there. But she was a commander, and a soldier, so she set herself in stone, the way she was taught, the way she had to be now.

"Alenko."

oOoOoOoOoOo

They were silent a moment, simply staring at each other like they hadn't seen each other in centuries. (Technically, the running-commentary part of Shepard's brain noted, they hadn't seen each other for _millions of years_.) Her crew shuffled awkwardly past them, suddenly incredibly interested in how tightly the supplies in the cargo bay were packed. Even the Doctor clearly recognized an awkward moment when he saw one, and went over to the Hammerhead, making generic noises of appreciation.

Kaidan Alenko, Alliance Military special operative, powerful biotic and veteran of the strike against Sovereign, scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "How've you b-"

"What the _hell _is your problem, Alenko?" Shepard practically exploded. She took two steps forward and shoved herself right in his face.

"Are we doing this then?" mused Kaidan. "Alright, _my _problem? What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, innocent Kaidan Alenko, just strolling through the universe." Shepard shouldered past him and stalked towards the lift. "You _followed _me."

Good old reliable Kaidan. It was a bit refreshing to know she could still hit his buttons. It didn't hurt the fact that his face was easier to read than a large-print children's story. "I was sent to assist in your operation-"

Shepard spun on her heel, turning on him faster than he probably thought possible, based on the quick half-step, half-stumble backwards he took. "You made it _perfectly clear_ how you felt about me _and _my operation back on Horizon."

"You were with Cerberus, what was I supposed to-"

"_And then_, you sent me that message about how you 'weren't ready'? _You_ weren't _ready_?" Shepard pounded her fist on the lift's call button. "You want to know what I wasn't ready for? Saren. The Reapers. _Choking to death._"

Kaidan winced. "God, Shepard, do you think that doesn't haunt me every night? That I couldn't save you?"

A collective hiss resounded in the bay - a half-dozen worried intakes of breath, all at once. Shepard ignored this, narrowing her eyes at Kaidan. "Couldn't _save me_? I've had to pull _your _ass out of the fire more times than I can count, Alenko. Horizon comes to mind again, actually."

"I'm trying to _help you_," Kaidan snapped, grinding his teeth together. "Besides, after I got off the horn with Hannah-"

"You _spoke to my mother_?"

"-she made me promise to look after you."

"I can look after myself!" Shepard roared. She poked him in the chest with her finger, _hard_, and the growling beast inside her head howled with pleasure at the flicker of pain that crossed his face. "What does she have to say about it anyway?"

"You can ask her yourself," Kaidan groaned, rubbing his chest with a grimace.

Shepard's rage cooled somewhat. "_What_."

"She's on her way here, with half the fleet. They want to know what's so important to you that you'll follow an alien with a blue box all the way out here." He turned to glare across the hangar at the Doctor, who grinned unabashedly at being discovered eavesdropping and gave a jaunty wave.

A soft beep heralded the lift's arrival. Shepard stormed into it. "Deck Two," she commanded, and as the doors closed, scenarios flooded into her head. Her mother was coming here. Her _mother_ was coming _here_. Moreover, Kaidan fucking Alenko had _brought _her here.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. One thing at a time.


	7. Chapter Six: Half The Fleet, Indeed

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Chapter Six - "Half The Fleet", Indeed**

Throughout the ages, sentient beings have evolved to overcome forces of nature. When the rains came, they built shelters. When the ground shook, they made those shelters flexible and strong. When the sky burned with radiation, they made clothing - or, in the case of the turians, evolved metallic-based leathery carapaces and sunken eyes.

Sometimes, however, nature overcame artificial designs. Tidal waves destroyed coastal cities. Solar flares baked entire continents. That Big One finally came and cleaved California in two. When such disasters struck, the only thing left to do was to pick up the pieces.

Garrus sighed as he approached the latest victim of Hurricane Shepard. They always left the dirty jobs to him. "So, how are things?" he asked, reaching behind his head to scratch the nape of his neck. "You lost weight!" he added, sheepishly.

Kaidan just stood in front of the lift, still staring at it in a stupor. "You know, I came here and I had a speech all worked out. It was a _good _speech, too."

Garrus could only shake his head. "Yeah. So how'd that work out for you?" He stepped around the man and bent just low enough to look him directly in the eyes. "Here's a tip, Kaidan, because I like you. Shepard's been through some rough shit. Some of that shit was you. Getting in her face and proclaiming that she now _needs your help_? Not the smartest thing."

Kaidan blinked. "But she _does _need my help."

Garrus shut his eyes and prayed to the Spirits that he would not have to save this idiot from himself. "Of _course_ she needs your help!" he proclaimed, straightening his posture and waving his arms dramatically. "She needs a damned army! We've got Reapers inbound sometime between now and a century from now and the Council is too worried about their political careers to prepare for it. Shepard's been doing everything _on her own_, and not only do you rub her face in it, but you imply that she's completely ineffectual!"

The emotions that played across Kaidan's face gave Garrus a spark of glee. While he had always gotten along well with the Lieutenant, there were certain things he had yet to forgive the man for. The shock on Kaidan's face ameliorated that slightly, as did the terror, the loneliness, the pain, the self-loathing...

Oh, _hell_.

"Look," Garrus said, putting his hand on Kaidan's shoulder awkwardly. "It wasn't the right thing to say, but your heart was in the right place. I think. What was this speech supposed to do, anyway?"

Kaidan gave a sad smile. "She was supposed to forgive me for being a jerk."

Garrus winced. "Ironic, then."

"What would you know?" Kaidan snapped. "You're the one gallivanting around the galaxy with her! The rest of us have had to do our duty as if nothing happened! There's still piracy in the Traverse, slavery and criminal warlords, and the Alliance can't ignore that."

"Oh, Mister Vakarian hasn't gallivanted a day in his life!" exclaimed a voice behind them. Garrus and Kaidan turned to find the Doctor, grinning his manic grin, his hands in his pockets as he swayed slightly on his feet. He tilted his head, his eyes tracking to the ceiling in heavy thought. "We~ell, he's been in galleys, I'll grant you that, but I'm quite certain he doesn't even know what a vant is! In fact, _I _don't even know what a vant is, and I'm exceedingly clever."

Garrus sighed and replied in a resigned monotone. "Yes, Doctor, that's true, I don't know what a vant is."

Kaidan narrowed his eyes. "So you're the alien the Alliance is talking about?"

The Doctor's eyes went wide. "Really? Gosh, and it's only been what, a day or so? Can I ask you a question?"

"Can I stop you?" asked Kaidan.

"You can't," said Garrus. "You really, really can't."

"You told the Commander that you came here to help," continued the Doctor, completely ignoring the exchange. "What did you mean by that? Help with what?"

"I'm afraid that's cl-"

"Classified?" interrupted the Doctor. "Yes, I thought you might say something like that. That means it has something to do with the Reapers, am I right? And since the good Commander has been going on alone, with no help from the outside Galaxy, I think it's rather more than you coming here on your hands and knees and begging to join her crew, because although you might be doing that as well, you needed to have something to convince her to look past your previous... _altercations_, we'll call them." At Kaidan's surprised expression, the Doctor raised his hands sheepishly. "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation - mostly because I was actively eavesdropping on it, if you must know - and I put two and two together. Not to mention that I _am_, for all intents and purposes, classified material, and I _am _really rather clever, as I believe I mentioned a moment ago. So what are you bringing to the table, Mister... Alenko, was it?"

"Yes," said Kaidan. "Now wait just a-"

"Wonderful name, Alenko," continued the Doctor. "Rather similar to Alonso, isn't it? You know, there's something I've always wanted to..." At both Kaidan and Garrus's looks, the Doctor sighed and pulled himself out of his tangent. "But that's not important right now. What's important is your answer to that question, Mister Alenko. What is it you're offering our dear Shepard?"

oOoOoOoOoOo

EDI's holographic avatar materialized in the conference room as Shepard stomped in, reminding her once again why she had acclimated to the A.I. so quickly. There were no sarcastic comments, no overly-emotional demonstrations of friendship - just a calm, soothing presence, politely waiting for Shepard's request. She could already feel her rage subsiding, far more quickly than it would have had she simply sat in the observation lounge and stewed for a bit.

"EDI, give me a location on the _SSV Orizaba_," she said, pacing along the length of the conference table. Her anger had started to disperse, but adrenaline was still coursing through her system, and her cybernetically-enhanced body was jittery.

"_The _SSV Orizaba_ is scheduled to access the Arcturus Relay at any moment, Commander,_" EDI replied. "_I took the liberty of monitoring their broadcasts upon your... conversation with Lieutenant Alenko._"

"...I see. Thank you," said Shepard, slightly mollified. "Hail them when they arrive in-system."

"_Yes, Commander,_" EDI acknowledged. Her holographic avatar remained in place for a moment, the vertical "eye slit" focused on Shepard, then disappeared altogether.

The fingers on Shepard's hands started to twitch, and not for the first time she resolved to get from Miranda a precisely ordered list of what, precisely, Cerberus did to revive her. From the heightened senses to the increased bone mass and muscle strength to the increased reflexes... The Illusive Man had claimed that he wanted Shepard exactly as she was, but that was hardly the only lie he had told her. She hadn't questioned her new abilities when she had needed them the most, but now that they were starting to impair her day-to-day activities...

Seeing Kaidan hadn't helped. Oh _God_, but it hadn't helped. It wasn't all that long ago that she'd tried to push past what had happened on Horizon. There was the mission with the Collectors, so she'd _had_ to put it aside, but she knew her crew pretty well by then, and they talked _all the time_. It didn't help that she'd started hitting the bars at every port they'd stopped at, or that she'd taken to pestering her teammates every bit of downtime, just to talk about something, _anything _that wasn't Kaidan Fucking Alenko. Garrus had even started making up some inane calibration error with the main cannons just to get a moment's rest. (He thought she couldn't tell, and she didn't have the heart to tell him what a bad liar he really was.)

The blue light from EDI's holographic avatar pulled her out of her thoughts. "_Commander, the _Orizaba_ has arrived in-system. You have a communication request._"

"Patch it through," Shepard said, steeling herself. At the answering beep, she took a deep breath. "_Normandy._"

"_Hi, sweetie,_" came the familiar voice of Hannah Shepard, decorated captain of the flagship of the Human Systems Alliance Fifth Fleet. "_I came as soon as I could. Have you been eating well? You miss meals when you're upset, and I know Doctor Chakwas has trouble getting you to eat properly as it is._"

"No offense, Mom, but what are you doing here?" Even though the connection was sound-only, Shepard crossed her arms and leaned against the wall in the pose Jacob kept referring to as the Shepard Is Annoyed, Your Argument Is Invalid.

"_What, I'm not allowed to be concerned about my own daughter? Not even after the Omega Four reports you submitted to Admiral Hackett?_" Hannah's voice was unamused, and Shepard just _knew_ she'd be shaking her head ruefully. "_Honestly, the only reason it's taken me this long is because I've been helping Lieutenant Alenko with a report._"

"Oh my God," Shepard lamented. "What gives him the right to-"

"_I was the one who contacted him,_" said Hannah, her warm and comforting voice suddenly hardening into steel. "_I know you two have a history, but he's under consideration for Spectre and I wanted to show his report. Didn't he tell you?_"

Kaidan, a Spectre. The concept gave Shepard pause, as she lined it up against her own experiences. "No, he didn't," she said. "He's probably earned it, though. More than any other candidate I know of. What have you two been conspiring about?"

"_What do you mean, sweetheart? He should have told you that first thing when he arrived._"

Shepard forcibly unclenched her fist before her fingernails drew blood. "Kaidan and I... haven't really been talking, Mom. Not since..."

"_Not since Horizon. I should have guessed. Oh, I'm sorry, honey. You should have called me._"

"Mom."

"_I know, I know. Well, we put together our own notes on the Omega Four report, and between the two of us we managed to pull some strings and get you a proper hearing._"

"The Council made their thoughts perfectly clear," said Shepard disdainfully. "They can't act without more evidence."

"_The Council speaks for the Citadel,_" Hannah said, "_but they also speak for their homeworlds, and they aren't the ruling bodies for their species, just like David doesn't make decisions for Earth._"

There was something in her mother's tone that triggered red flags. "Mother, what did you do?"

The crackle of the intercom popped through the audio feed. "_Sorry to interrupt, Commander, but we're picking up incoming ships from the relay._"

"How many ships, Joker?" Shepard asked. Her mother only laughed.

"_Hard to say, I haven't seen readings like this since the Battle of the Citadel. IFF transponders coming online..._" Joker's voice trailed off. "_Shepard, the _Fuji_ and the _St. Helens_ are here._"

Shepard blinked. "Check that again, Joker. The _St. Helens _never leaves Earth's orbit."

"_It did this time,_" Hannah said, still chuckling. "_The _Tesla_ should be here too._"

"_Yes, ma'am,_" said Joker, not even trying to keep the surprise out of his voice. "_Commander, I have thirty-six contacts, most of them from turian and asari battlegroups. No, there's a salarian frigate, the _Pride of Elcor_, something in Volus that I can't read, and the _Qwib-Qwib."

"Mother, _what did you do?_" Shepard demanded. "When the Council finds out we went behind their backs-"

"_Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,_" said Joker, a wry tone underscoring the apology, "_but they already have. The last ship in was the _Destiny Ascension_. They're hailing us._"

"_Put them on hold, Mister Moreau,_" Hannah said. "_They can wait their turn just like everyone else. So, honey, what do you say?_"

Hope and despair fought an eternal battle inside Shepard's chest, laying seige to one another and taking absolutely no prisoners. The Council would be pissed, but she had deniability, and now that the civilian and military leaders of half the galaxy were ready for a conference...

"Thank you," she whispered, barely acknowledging the relieved smile that was slowly spreading on her face.

She might actually have a chance.

oOoOoOoOoOo

The Doctor's grin was nearly three miles wide, and Garrus's headache was threatening to come back. There was something about his face that seemed to scream "insufferable", no matter what expression was currently playing across his pseudo-elastic features. They had sent Kaidan off to the crew quarters, partially to allow Kaidan some rest after the Shepard-class IED had detonated in his face, and partially to keep him out of the way in case she decided to come around for another pass.

"That's humans for you," said the Doctor, watching as the lift doors closed. "Always full of surprises."

"Not all of us are human, Doc," Garrus pointed out. "Besides, they're still the youngest Council race by far."

"Oh, I never said they were the best at _everything_," said the Doctor. "Just that they're so... _versatile_. You have to admit it, what they lack in focus, they make up for in pure potential."

Garrus nodded absently. It was true, what the Doctor was saying. In the short time since arriving in the spotlight, Earth and her colonies had spread to the point that humans become one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable species in the galaxy. It had gotten to the point where the extremist anti-human fundamentalists out there were predicting a human-overrun Council by the end of their own century, and the pundits were gathering steam at a frightening pace. Humans, they argued, were worse than vorcha. Wherever they showed up, they threw themselves into the machines at every level. They _integrated_, which was worse than conquering because they weren't stopped from coming in. Even Citadel Security, which had been a turian-dominated organization seemingly since its foundation, had more humans in it than other races.

Most of the more... _reasonable _perspectives on the situation were more understanding. Turians as a whole, to give one example, looked upon humanity with begrudging respect. Anyone who could go toe to toe with their best military leaders with a generally lower grasp of technology was worth a second look. Much like the krogans of old, humans took to the First Contact War with a fire, and once the Council had stepped in, they started working alongside their former enemies with only a minimum of difficulties. They were hot-headed, short-lived, and belligerent, but they had sparked a passion in the other Council races, and Earth quickly became the new buzzword in all the media outlets.

"I can't argue with that," Garrus said. "Say what you will about the humans, but they've got moxie."

"Moxie!" exclaimed the Doctor. "That's the word exactly! Spunk and _chutzpah_, too. You read my mind perfectly. Calling out a convocation on the spot for all the world leaders? Finally forcing the galaxy to wake up to the larger problem at hand? That's the kind of outside-thinking pig-headedness that humans possess in such great quantities."

Garrus could only nod. Pig-headedness was a good term for the whole situation, that was certainly true. He knew more than a few turian leaders that would be using that exact phrase over the next couple months. The Councillor, for one.

"So anyway," said the Doctor, switching gears, "what was the whole thing with the Leftenant? He and Shepard used to be an item, I take it?"

Garrus twitched his mandibles in a grimace. "Why are you asking me?"

"Because it's clearly none of my business!" responded the Doctor happily. "If I don't be nosy, I'll never find out, 'cause nobody will tell me."

Hell. It was going to be one of _those_days. Garrus sighed and pressed the call button for the lift. "Alright, but let's get a drink first. It's a long story."

"Those are my favorite kind," said the Doctor. His grin, against all reason, seemed to spread even wider, and Garrus knew he was going to regret this one way or another.

oOoOoOoOoOo

"...and he had a replica of her armor!"

The Doctor laughed along with Garrus, the two of them nearly doubled over by this point. It certainly didn't help that Garrus had been knocking down shots of some viscous glowing blue liquid the entire time - though to his credit, his speech hadn't started slurring yet. Assuming that's what alcohol did to turians, but the Doctor was pretty familiar with the intoxicated state of most sentient beings, and they all tended to fall along the same lines.

He himself hadn't had anything stronger than a fizzy strawberry soda, of course. Stories were serious matters, and he wouldn't ruin the exquisite narration of everyday people with something as crude as hard liquor. This was what he _lived _for, after all. Sure, a great deal of it was being able to see delight and wonder on the faces of his travelling companions as they experienced something new for the first time, because he'd been around so long that the marvels of space and time were old friends, and he'd grown accustomed to it. If you've seen one gamma-ray burst lancing through a solar system after a particularly nasty supernova, you've seen them all. But to Rose and Martha, to Ace and Sarah Jane and Harry and Jamie and all of them, so many different faces over so many years, each time was like the first time, and when they saw it... When they saw it, he saw it.

As wonderful as experiencing a fresh reaction to the marvels he had at his fingertips was, it never compared to getting right in the thick of things, of walking with just regular people on regular days, watching them go about their regular lives and tell their regular stories. That was something he never had, in all his however many years he had spent traversing the cosmos (he had lost track a long time ago, sometimes it seemed like he'd been 900 years old practically forever). Planets and nebulae and stars and galaxies, that was all math when you got right down to it, but people! People you could always count on to be glorious, from the great civilizations all the way down to individual day-to-day lives.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," said the Doctor, believing every word and swimming, enraptured, in a sea of conversation. "What did the Commander do when she saw him?"

"Oh, she was livid!" said Garrus, pouring himself another shot of whatever incandescent liquid was in that canister. "After the endless patience she had for him on the Citadel, I thought she was going to just snap right there and shoot him!"

"No! The _Commander_?" asked the Doctor, his eyes wide. "Really?"

Garrus nodded (a bit more dramatically than he probably thought he was, those shots were starting to take their toll). "In the foot, probably. Or the shoulder. She's not a monster, after all. No, she just got in his face and told him flat out-" Garrus schooled his features into his best approximation of a Shepard Glare, and modulated his voice to imitate her low, throaty tones, "-'Conrad, let me make this perfectly clear. This is _not acceptable_.'"

"Marvelous!" crowed the Doctor, taking a swig of his fizzy berry drink.

"And he was still going on about this sting operation he had planned!"

"Even then?"

"Even then!" said Garrus, before knocking back the shot and setting the glass back on the table. "So she said she'd look into it for him, if he promised to go back to his wife and stop playing games that would get him killed!"

"His wife that left him," the Doctor clarified.

"Sent him away," Garrus corrected. "Turns out they patched things up, and he started a charity for refugees and orphans, so I guess even Conrad gets it right sometimes."

The lift door opened, prompting both Garrus and the Doctor to turn, still laughing, as Shepard and another woman stepped onto the crew deck.

"Shepard!" shouted Garrus, a bit too loudly. "We were just talking about you."

"Of course you were," said Shepard, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Maybe we should come back later."

"It'll take more than a pair of drunk soldiers to turn me away," said the older woman, and the Doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise as he took in her features. High cheekbones, severe posture, and more than a hint of red left in her greying hair were the obvious similarities, but the Doctor also noted at least six other, more subtle ties to the Commander he had come to know so well in the past day or so.

Shepard gave the Doctor an unamused look, but sighed and stepped towards their table. "Mom, this is Garrus, my chief weapons specialist, and the Doctor, our... guest."

"So this is the Doctor we've been hearing so little about," Shepard's mother remarked, holding out her hand. "Hannah Shepard, Captain of the _SSV Orizaba_, Fifth Fleet."

"Delighted to meet you, Captain," said the Doctor, grasping her hand warmly. "Your daughter has certainly made an impression on me, and no mistake."

"I don't doubt it," said Hannah, lifting the corner of her mouth in an amused grin. (Seven, thought the Doctor, the same lopsided smiles.) "She obviously likes you, or else she'd be making other impressions on you. Fist-shaped, most likely."

"Mom," groaned Shepard. The Doctor just grinned. Mothers were the same no matter where you went, it looked like.

"Come on, sweetheart," Hannah said, "this whole party is for your benefit. I have to get my ribs in before the media shows up, don't I?"

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose again, opening her mouth to offer a pained rebuttal, but stopped dead as she suddenly convulsed, her face contorting in a grimace of agony.

"Jane!"

"Shepard!"

Hannah grabbed her daughter's arms, holding her steady, as Garrus and the Doctor rushed forward.

"Wake Doctor Chakwas," Garrus snapped, the fuzz of alcohol suddenly gone from his voice. He pointed at a pair of servicemen at another table, frozen in shock. "That was an order, gentlemen! Get Chakwas, tell her to meet us in the medbay! _Now!_"

The servicemen bolted. Shepard convulsed again, jerking out of her mother's arms. The Doctor dashed around and managed to catch her before she hit the floor.


	8. Chapter Seven: Waiting

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Chapter Seven - Waiting**

"Yes, sir. Signal has been sent."

"_Good. Keep it going for another three minutes, then stop. We don't want to kill her yet._"

The operative tensed as a pair of feet walked past his maintenance alcove between the bulkheads, his hand moving silently to a knife at his side. His fingers brushed the hilt, but he relaxed and moved back to the comm when the bystanders passed.

The comm system was state-of-the-art, the bleeding edge of what research scientists could put together for the field. It utilized a quantum-entanglement binary resonance chamber, similar to the suites of holotransmitters used by a select few, allowing instantaneous and untraceable communication across immeasurable light-years. It was smaller than the holotransmitter arrays, capable of voice-only, and fit into an average-sized backpack.

It was seventeen million credits.

"I still think a simple assassination would be easiest," he said, checking on his more conventional transmitter. "She's too dangerous of a target to be left alive."

"_All in due time,_" reassured the voice on the other end of the miniature QEC unit. "_She still has a purpose in my plans, and I intend to make the most of it before I dispose-what is that?_"

The operative's transmitter had given off a trill of alarm. "Impossible," said the operative, typing furiously. "The signal's been blocked prematurely."

"_Shut it down,_" commanded the voice. "_All of it. We don't want it traced back to you._"

"It's impossible to trace, the transmission is tight-beam and heavily encrypted-"

"_If it can be detected, it can be traced. Shut it _down_, Mister Leng._"

Operative Leng cursed and shut down the transmitter. "Even if they don't trace it back to me, she'll know who's behind it. She'll be on the warpath now."

There was a long moment of silence, punctuated by the intake of breath through a cigarette. "_Not an unforseen outcome. The killswitches on the _Normandy_ crew have all been compromised, even Taylor and Lawson. They'll be on the lookout for you, which is why it's that much more important that you _stay hidden_. Strike only when I order you, not a moment before. Do I make myself clear?_"

Leng gritted his teeth. He had smuggled himself onto an Alliance warship for this chance, and it was going all _wrong_. "Understood, sir," he said. "Leng out."

He shut down the QEC and stowed it - and the transmitter - back in his satchel. Then, with the attention to detail that got him noticed by Cerberus in the first place, he dirtied up his coveralls and smeared grease on his face, before hiking himself out of the alcove and stomping back into the nearest common area.

The engineering chief beamed at him when he entered the lounge. "Ah, Danielson. Those power couplings get replaced alright?"

Leng affected a cheesy grin. "Sure enough, chief! Got the old ones out, and I'll give 'em a good deressing tonight." He patted his satchel, thumping lightly against the comm units as he did so.

"That was the strangest thing," mused the chief, turning back to his poker game. "I had replaced those just last week, there's no way they'd have got gummed up that quickly."

Leng grinned sheepishly. "Maybe someone spilled coffee from the walkway?" he asked (having taken care to do precisely that the night before).

"Maybe." The engineering chief yawned. "Go get that taken care of, then. The admirals are in a mood, and you don't want them to have to come down here to complain about something."

"Understood, sir," said Leng, saluting. He grabbed a doughnut from the counter and popped it in his mouth on the way out of the lounge.

The admirals being in a mood was good. He needed confusion in the fleet to pull off Plan B when he got the go-ahead. He liked Plan B. It was the sort of plan that could be seen through eyelids. He almost wanted to thank whoever screwed up Plan A, in fact; in part because he wanted to see exactly what sort of genius they had on the _Normandy _that could detect that signal. After all, he had read up on Shepard and her team, and kept up to date on the exact capabilities of the frigate and its AI administrator, and the killsignal was presumably beyond their ability to thwart.

There was a new angle, and he was interested in finding out exactly what it was.

oOoOoOoOoOo

_A few minutes before..._

The medbay was a flurry of activity. Garrus had gingerly placed Shepard on an exam table, and Doctor Chakwas and Professor Solus were keeping up a steady dialogue as they both scanned and attempted to treat her. As much as the two physicians stayed out of each other's ways, the Doctor could see that they worked well together in an emergency.

"Pulse rate accelerating. Breathing erratic. Going into anaphylactic shock."

"Give me that oxygen mask! No, that one there!"

"Full dilation of the pupils. Worrying. Pharmacological effect? Must run blood samples."

"Her brain activity's spiking! I have no idea what's doing this! Shepard, can you hear me? Shepard!"

The Doctor held back, staying by the doorway. After Chakwas had bodily removed the anxiously hovering Grunt from the room, he remembered exactly _why _he didn't mess with M.D.s if he could help it, and remained politely out of the way.

"Fascinating," Mordin commented, staring at the holographic readout on his orange omni-tool. "Convulsions matching up with brainwave activity and resonating frequency in subdermal implants. Precisely timed. Artificial in nature."

The Doctor frowned. "What frequency?" He whipped out his brainyspecs and started fiddling with settings on his sonic screwdriver.

"Peak amplitude at delta 65.2, variance 0.23. Wavelength... three seconds apart." Mordin swept the omni-tool down the length of Shepard's body. "Difficult to pinpoint source."

Doctor Chakwas attached a sensor to Shepard's temples. "This should help calm her down, at least, buy us a few seconds."

"Superfluous," said Mordin, shaking his head. "Surgery most likely option, remove implanted receptors. Likely Cerberus failsafe." He scowled. "Should have considered before. Foolish."

"So we prep for surgery," said Chakwas, pulling on a pair of sterile gloves.

"Unnecessary. Receptors decentralized, no point continuing procedure until we know where they are."

"Hang on," said the Doctor. "Hang on hang on hang on, I may just have... _there_."

A whirring buzz filled the air as the Doctor activated the screwdriver and held it at maximum settings. "How's that for clever? Found the signal."

On the table, Shepard's spasms ceased and her breathing slowly went back to normal. Both Mordin and Chakwas went for their consoles to check her readings.

"Brainwave activity back to normal," said Mordin. "Very impressive, Doctor."

"We~ell, it was nothing really. Just had to pick out a microsensitive amplified resonance signal that was going through a subspace bit of wibbly jumble." The Doctor grinned. "Nothing _difficult_."

"_Of course not, Doctor,_" came the smooth velvet tones of the ship's computer out of a nearby speaker. "_Especially since you were just running up and down the frequencies until you hit the one that was affecting Shepard._"

"That's what I said, didn't I?" said the Doctor, unshamed at being caught in the lie. "Nothing difficult! Computer, can you isolate the signal and continue to block it?"

"_Certainly,_" the mechanized female voice replied. "_Now that you stumbled on it, I can match the cancellation frequency and keep it running. Fortunately, that will no longer be necessary._"

"Why not?" demanded Chakwas.

It was Mordin who replied. "Signal was deliberate," he said, blinking slowly. "Transmission on such a scale must be monitored. Most likely alerted when it was blocked. Shut it down before it could be traced." He inhaled sharply. "Only to be expected... _from Cerberus_."

"Let me know when she's awake," said the Doctor absently. His attention was focused outside the windows to the medbay, where Lieutenant Alenko and Captain Shepard were waiting nervously in the mess hall. "I'll want to talk to her about that."

He triggered the door controls. He'd told Shepard and her crew about his own past. Now it was time to find out more about hers.

oOoOoOoOoOo

When Kaidan Alenko's shuttle arrived in-system and Joker had answered his hail, his stomach had been doing flipflops. Not since the destruction of the original _Normandy _had he been that nervous, and he was including the entirety of the Saren expedition in all of that. That, at least, had been standard Alliance fare - if a bit grander scale than he was used to. Run, shoot the enemy, achieve the objective. (It had helped that his Commanding Officer could put a block of dry ice on her head and it wouldn't evaporate.) But waiting to see if his former CO (and former lover, for that matter) would give the order to blow him out of the sky?

Nothing sapped a soldier's will to live faster than total helplessness. Even a choice to charge in blindly - rifle set to spray-and-pray - was still a choice, even if it was a suicidal move. When you put the ball into someone else's court? _That _was hell.

He was feeling that now. Shepard was unconscious, possibly dying, and he could do nothing but stand in the mess hall and wait. It was the _SR-1 _all over again. He could feel the escape pods firing explosively out of the burning ship again, smell the smoke and blood and the tang of ozone from fried electronics.

"Well, I'd say 'penny for your thoughts', but by the look on your face that would be a woeful underselling."

Kaidan turned. The Doctor had apparently snuck around him (what were those shoes made of, to be so silent on the deck?) and staring uncomfortably at him. Without waiting for a response, the Doctor stuck his hands into his pants pockets and continued his rumination.

"I mean really," he was saying, "that's not very much of a basis for comparison. Is it one penny per thought? Do they package them by the gross? If it's a penny a pinch I'd understand but one for an entire allottment of them, we~ell that's wrecking the entire monetary thoughtfarming economy altogether, innit?"

At Kaidan's right, Hannah Shepard crossed her arms and shot the Doctor an impressive Glare. "What is going on with my daughter, Doctor?"

The Doctor actually flinched. "Good heavens that's where she gets it from. Hallo, Captain." He turned towards the medbay. "She's... stable. Whatever was attacking her seems to have stopped; the questions now are 'what', 'how', and 'why'. And believe you me, I'm just as interested in the answers to those as you two are."

Kaidan narrowed his eyes. "Are you now? That's interesting."

The Doctor only raised his eyebrows in mild amusement. "Well, _yes_. After all, I very rarely come across coincidences that are actually coincidental - at least insofar as much as I come into play - and all signs point towards this... _convocation_, I believe. Which might answer the 'why', possibly, so that brings us to the 'what'." He frowned. "Probably 'who' would be the better question. Does Commander Shepard have any enemies?"

Hannah and Kaidan just stared.

"Right, sorry, silly question," admitted the Doctor, his voice sheepish. "What I meant was, anyone who might be present at this gathering of governments _and_ who might have the means to attack Shepard remotely? I mean, that's _got_to be expensive, right?"

"...Cerberus," said Kaidan, eventually.

"The dog?" exclaimed the Doctor. "Oh, don't tell me _he's_ escaped. Do you know how _hard _it is to find a kennel for a transgalactic... hellhound..." He fell silent under the weight of their expressions. "Probably not the same one I'm thinking of, then?"

"Cerberus is a human-centric terrorist organization," said Kaidan. "They recovered Shepard's body after she was killed and brought her back to fight the Reapers."

"_Brought her back?_"

"She says it was a two year operation, and she's mostly reconstructed tissue and cybernetic enhancements now." Kaidan grimaced. "She wouldn't have ever worked for Cerberus, even then, but they were the only ones after the Reapers and they were willing to fund her. That's what she was doing when I... ran into her again."

"So, why are they trying to kill her now?"

"Probably because she told the Illusive Man to shove it where that Doppler-shifting sun doesn't shine," growled Hannah. "My baby doesn't stand for half the crap he asked her to do, and she told him so, took this ship out from under him, and the entire crew with it."

"Right," said Kaidan, "but why would they wait this long to act? Why now?"

The Doctor's face lit up in a way that shook Kaidan to the core. The last time he'd seen that expression, Joker had charged Sovereign at full thrust. "Captain Shepard, when were you going to have that meeting with the Commander and the lovely people in all those ships out there?"

"Later tonight," said Hannah. "But we'll have to postpone it now, there's no way she's going to be able to hold a conference like she is now."

"Don't reschedule it," said the Doctor, a worrying gleam in his eye. "I've got an idea. We need to round up The Team! Oh, I haven't had a Team to round up in a while that didn't end in explosions and pain."

He started to rush off, his tan coat flowing magnificently behind him, but he stopped in his tracks and turned to them. "Come on, then! _Allons-y_, Alenko!" He paused, screwing his face up in concentration. "No, no, sorry, that doesn't quite work for me. It's just _not the same_. Anyway, we've no time to waste!"

"What are we doing?" asked Kaidan. He was getting annoyed again, that helpless feeling washing over him in waves. He was just getting washed along on this strange alien's whim, and he wasn't going to stand for it.

The Doctor huffed in annoyance. "If this Cerberus group is here, and trying to take down the Commander," he said, speaking slowly as if Kaidan was a particularly unimpressive student, "we need to find out what they're doing. And the best way to do that is ask them directly. Which means we need to _draw them out_. Which _means_-"

"You're setting a trap for them," finished Hannah, walking alongside.

"I'm setting a trap for them!" shouted the Doctor gleefully.


	9. Chapter Eight: Common Sense of Self

**Summary:** The Doctor thought he could do no more harm to the universe. It takes a fresh perspective to show him he is dead wrong. Doctor Who meets Mass Effect.

* * *

**Storm on the Horizon  
****Chapter Eight - Common Sense of Self**

It wasn't the old-fashioned intravenous needles jammed into her skin at uncomfortable locations, or the restraints on her wrists, waist, and ankles. It wasn't the bright, sterile lights shined directly in her face, or the flickering holographic panels floating above her like some sort of child's drawing. It wasn't the sharp metallic taste in her mouth or the dull throbbing pain of her tongue, teeth, and the inside of her cheeks. It wasn't even the ever-present antiseptic smells wafting past her.

What woke Shepard up was the _beeping_. The irregular, high-pitched staccato of a cardiometric device, placed right by her head, forced her through the fog of sudden consciousness and into the realm of painful lucidity.

She groaned as she opened her eyes. Another horribly familiar ceiling.

At the edge of her hearing, she could pick up a hushed murmuring. She turned her head - as much as she could with the strap set firmly around her forehead - towards the gathered mob at the opposite end of the medbay.

"She's awake!"  
"...n't make eye contact, _whatever you do_."  
"Can she hear us?"  
"Is it still Shepard in there?"  
"She's looking at us _she's looking at us_."

She rolled her eyes and pulled gently at the restraints, testing their limits. "You-" She was interrupted by a coughing fit. "You guys can untie me now," she said, weakly.

"No, don't engage," she heard Joker say from over by the door. "Rookie mistake."

"Shepard, we're all worried about you and we're glad you're okay, but you were hit with some sort of internal neural scrambling device." Garrus walked into her field of vision, making sure to keep out of potential arm's reach. "Something that Cerberus set up. We just want to make sure you're still you. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Come a little closer and ask me that again," she growled.

"It's her!" Garrus shouted gleefully. He motioned someone over and the two of them started unstrapping Shepard from the bed.

"What happened?" Shepard asked, sitting up as soon as she was freed enough to do so. Beside her, Mordin - who must have been the person Garrus called over - started taking readings with his omni-tool.

"Encephalographic recombination," he said. "Caused by pinpoint long-range activation of hidden Cerberus cybernetics. Killswitch."

Shepard glared at him. "I thought you and Doctor Chakwas found all of them. The spinal shock column, the arsenic patch, the... what was it?"

"Napalm generators in your sinuses," supplied Mordin helpfully. "Ingenius. Must discuss fabrication designs with Miss Lawson, thank you for the reminder."

Garrus and Shepard exchanged a look.

Mordin huffed in indignation. "Academic interest only! Would never consider practical experimentation." He paused, blinking twice. "Would never find volunteers, in any case. Too messy."

"But you got all those out," said Shepard, eventually. "And you looked for more! I was in and out of surgery for a week!"

"That wasn't a fun week for _anyone_," Garrus agreed, grunting in pain when Shepard smacked him in the arm.

"Must have been more. Project Lazarus still classified, even in Cerberus databanks. Only full access at the highest channels."

"And if Miranda gave us everything she knows, then there's only one other person who might have secret knowledge," Shepard said, grimacing.

"The Illusive Man," acknowledged Mordin. "Bad news, had trouble locating offending circuitry. Enmeshed completely in nervous system. Decentralized."

"It would have killed you if the Doctor hadn't found a way to stop it," said Doctor Chakwas, coming around with a glass of water.

The water was a gift from heaven, Shepard decided as she sucked it down greedily. She hadn't realized how dehydrated she must have been, even with the IVs. She gestured vaguely towards the needles and Chakwas dutifully began removing them - albeit reluctantly.

"So what's the real situation with me?" Shepard asked after draining the glass and taking a few much-needed breaths. "You wouldn't have strapped me down for all that."

That must have been the cue for the audience at the doorway to quickly file out, Joker grumbling the entire time as he struggled to keep up with the crowd.

Garrus shared a look with Mordin. "Well, basically, not only was the device giving you seizures, but there was a distinct possibility it was hooked up to your brain, which meant that there might have been some sort of control mechanism for when you woke up." He held up a hand to forestall any interruptions. "Yes, we know 'Lucy wanted you to be exactly as you were, but he's exactly the kind of person to have backup plans for his backup plans, you know this."

Shepard nodded ruefully. She probably should have been surprised at not being surprised, but at that point she wouldn't have been shocked if the Illusive Man himself had shown up to explain what he did.

"But you don't have to worry about that now," Garrus was saying, "because the Doctor and EDI found the transmission frequency and are actively blocking it out. Also, your Reaper tissue is slowly eating what bits of it we could find. That's why your heart monitor is going crazy over there." Garrus parted his mandibles in an expression she had come to recognize over the many missions they had done together: embarassment. "Also, you have Reaper tissue. So that's a thing that happened."

Shepard had already frozen. "They. Put. _What?_"

"EDI discovered in Lazarus files," Mordin said. "Intention was to use possible genetics against them. Taken from Sovereign. Killswitch most likely option in case you went slasher movie on them, either for being consumed and turned, or..." Mordin took a deep breath, practically savoring the next word, "..._revenge_."

"So you can see why we'd want to take precautions," Garrus added.

"That was... smart," Shepard admitted. "Inconvenient, but smart. Is there any way to get this shit out of me?"

Mordin shook his head. "Not easily. Not without full files, which only Illusive Man possesses."

"Then we'll get them from him," Shepard said.

Garrus tilted his head quizzically. "How? It's not like he'll be easy to find. He kept switching hideouts after Miranda defected."

Shepard stood up, leaning on the nearby bulkhead to steady herself. "He's here. Big meeting of the largest governments in the galaxy, why _wouldn't_he have found some way to tag along?" She frowned. "Though Mom's already called it off, I take it?"

Garrus suddenly became enamored with the electrocardigraph readout next to Shepard's bed.

"Not... exactly," Mordin said, scratching the back of his head awkwardly.

Shepard felt her headaches returning. "Alright, fine. Just tell me one thing. Where is the Doctor right now?"

oOoOoOoOoOo

"...and _that_ is why, for the benefit of your descendants _and_ your ancestors, a multi-ethnic cast for _Les Misérables _should always be considered."

Shepard didn't even bother to hide her groan of dismay when she hobbled off the shuttle in the _Destiny Ascension_'s hangar bay. The Doctor was there, as Garrus had indicated, and he was currently being interrogated by her absolute least favorite reporter.

"Would you at least agree that this musical is an important part of Earth culture?"

"Oh, most definitely," replied the Doctor, grinning like the madman that Shepard was starting to understand he actually was. "Out of all the stage productions of all the different cultures in the universe, I have to say that it's my absolute favorite. Brings a tear to my eye every time."

"Then you'd agree that such a cultural icon must be kept out of the hands of races that have no context or appreciation for such works of art."

"Miss al-Jilani, have you ever seen a production of _Les Misérables_?"

The reporter blinked. "It's such an important part of Earth's history that-"

"Yes, yes, but have you _seen _it?"

"Not since high school," she admitted.

"Well, there you go! It's such a stunning critique of classism and bigotry with a backdrop of oppression and breakaway hit singles. Just try to imagine a young-but-talented quarian girl cast in the role as Éponine Thénardier," said the Doctor, balancing his accents beautifully. "There wouldn't be a dry eye in the house."

"It's clear that you aren't taking this interview seriously, Doctor," said the reporter. "What about the allegations of a potential affair with Commander Jane Shepard, formerly of the Alliance military?"

The Doctor caught Shepard's eye and grinned, but gave no other indication that he had seen her behind Khalisah al-Jilani. "Oh, the Commander? We~ell, I don't like to kiss and tell..."

"So there is substance to these rumors?" pounced al-Jilani excitedly.

"I wouldn't so much say 'rumors', mind you," said the Doctor, clearly enjoying himself. "After all, these kinds of things sneak up behind you, don't they?"

Shepard rolled her eyes, but silenced her footsteps as she made her way behind the reporter.

"How about the claims that she is, and I quote, 'A frigid ice queen with a vendetta'?"

"That's a rather striking claim," answered the Doctor. "Wouldn't you say so, Commander?"

Al-Jilani shook her head. "I won't fall for that one again, Doctor-"

"I'll answer these questions, Khalisah," said Shepard, mere inches behind the reporter. It was every bit as rewarding as she had hoped; she swore that the woman's feet rose off the ground at least two feet as she whirled around.

"Commander Shepard!" said the reporter, barely managing to compose herself. "If I might have a quick-"

"The Doctor is a consultant to my current mission, nothing more," Shepard said in her Public Appearances voice. "Said mission is currently classified, pending a review from the governments that make up Council space."

"And the rumors of romantic entanglement between yourself, the Doctor, and Lieutenant Alenko?" pushed al-Jilani.

Shepard gave her best slow, predatory smile, and sauntered into al-Jilani's personal space. "Are none of your business, Khalisah, and any further inquiries will be considered hostile. Do I make myself clear?"

To her credit, the reporter barely quavered, though Shepard's enhanced eyesight did catch the tightening of al-Jilani's neck muscles in a hurried swallow. "Perfectly clear, Commander," she said. "Can I get an interview once the review board has made their decision?"

"I don't know, Khalisah," said Shepard, turning her back and walking away. She motioned for the Doctor to follow her. "Can you?"

They had made it halfway across the hangar bay before Shepard's enhanced hearing picked out al-Jilani's voice, sputtering to her camera about the indignities of reporting on a Citadel ship and the increasing corruption of Earth's best and brightest.

"Is all media like that, Doctor?" asked Shepard when they had reached the security checkpoint for the _Destiny Ascension_.

"Like what?" chirped the Doctor, all innocence and high-pitched curiosity.

"Like _that_," said Shepard. "Getting all crazy where the military is concerned, trying to make out every offensive action or tactical strike as something horrible that can be spun to suit the opinion of the week."

"The media is many things," said the Doctor mysteriously, "but the one thing it always agrees on is its attitude on this." He shook his head. "Can't say I blame them. War. War never changes."

oOoOoOoOoOo

The Council chamber was overcrowded to the point of exploding. Across the raised dais, three long tables were set up to accomodate the myriad heads of state, pushed together for what might actually have been the first time in the history of the universe - or at least, Shepard reminded herself in a bitter realization, since the last Reaper cycle. It was evocative of the old United Nations summits from pre-Relay Earth, minus the translators and the rows and rows of flags.

In front of the dais was a podium - presumably for Shepard herself. It was angled perpendicular to the tables, giving whoever was at the podium equal view of the heads of state, the Citadel Council seats at the far end (raised even higher, because of _course _they'd be looking down at the proceedings while framed beautifully by the brown dwarf's throes of almost-stardom, easily visible through the tall segmented viewports throughout the chamber), and the throng of spectators, reporters, and floating holocams occupying the main floor.

That was what was unsettling Shepard the most, she decided as she and the Doctor walked towards the podium. The crowded floor. It was a mix of heights, colors, and (despite the air scrubbers running at full tilt) _smells_, combining the spicy aromas of turian skin with the unfortunate musk of too many humans in close quarters. This was punctuated by the rotting meat she had come to associate with krogans, a salty chlorinated presence of hanar, and an occasional whiff of disinfected microfibers, indicating the presence of quarians and volus, the latter not readily visible with the reporters crowding the stage and everyone else towering over them.

"I can't believe I can tell who's out there by _smell_," Shepard lamented, stepping around a pair of hooded men in engineering coveralls who were taking away an extra table from the dais.

"Can you? Blimey, that's useful," said the Doctor, raising his eyebrows. "Is that new, then?"

"Cerberus enhanced my senses when they rebuilt me," said Shepard, frowning. "It was never this strong, though. I could tell you what that guy had for breakfast."

They reached the podium in silence, listening to the excited murmuring of the crowd to their left. Cameras flashed and spotlights threatened to blind both of them, before a pair of security officers rushed to the front rows and calmly explained that yes, this was a public hearing but they were never promised a public _seeing_, and they could still see the proceedings provided that those on-stage could see as well.

"Well?" asked the Doctor.

"What?"

"What did he have for breakfast? If you don't tell me I'll be wondering all day."

Shepard rolled her eyes and closed her eyes, remembering the scents on the engineer's breath as he passed by. Sugar and processed wheat, milk, artificial fruit flavoring... "Some sort of cereal. I'm not sure which."

The Doctor grinned. "Oooh, now _there's _a skill. War's over, you can go into entertainment. Fairgrounds, that sort of thing. Do me next?" Without waiting, he breathed heavily in Shepard's face.

"Oof, warn me next time you do that, will you?" she said, glowering. "Gardner's waffles. He makes them every Friday."

"That's fantastic that you can pick that out like that," said the Doctor. He frowned. "But today's Tuesday, isn't it?"

Shepard turned back to the podium, allowing herself a small smile while the Doctor sputtered indignantly. Whatever he would have said next, however, was drowned out by the sudden deafening silence as the Councillors took their places on their ego-platform.

"So, Commander Shepard," the Turian Councillor began, his mandibles pressed tightly against his skin in a sneer, "tell us why you have summoned us here to this... _place_."

oOoOoOoOoOo

"_Joker to Hawkeye, what's the status?_"

"_Can't you see the video feeds from where you are?_"

"_Yeah, but that's no fun. I need the Madden play-by-play. Explain to me exactly what's going on in exquisite detail, because it's not like you have anything else to do._"

"_Come on down and see for yourself, then._"

"_Don't be like that, Hawkeye, I'm much too classy for that._"

"_Spirits alive, Joker, you watch hanar porn while you're flying the ship._"

"_It's _classy_ hanar porn. They have monocles and top hats on. It's real avant-garde._"

"Joker, Kaylee. Get your damned nonsense off this channel or Keelah help me I will replace your entire folder with whatever Jack thinks is funny at any given moment."

"_...you wouldn't._"

"**Try me**."

"_...so okay, have a good mission you guys, I'll let you work in peace._"

"_...remind me never to piss you off, Kaylee._"

Tali shook her head and closed the comm channel. The boys were restless, she knew, and it was always better to nip those conversations in the bud before they got out of hand. One time she had walked into Engineering during the weekly poker game and the conversations she had stumbled across had made her want to defragment her suit multiple times in a row. What was even worse were the gestures the men were making, too. But she had put a stop to that the moment she pulled up a chair, asked to be dealt in, and started telling stories of her own.

The boys didn't seem to like that. Not even when she started joining in with the gestures. After that, while the poker games continued, she was able to work on the engines in peace, with only normal ship's gossip accompanying the peaceful hum of the drive core.

"_Kaylee, Hawkeye. Council's agitated, but I'm not getting audio up here._"

Tali moved closer to the ventilation grate, trying to peer through. "Shepard's doing her usual speech."

"_The one about how the Reapers are everyone's problems and the Council should get their heads out of their asses for once?_"

"That's the one. She really didn't need to be here for this, any of us could have done it by now. Ninth Shadow, are you in position?"

"_I still do not understand the meaning of these code-names the Doctor picked out for us._"

"_Nine, Hawkeye. Code-names are used in case enemies are listening in, so they don't know who you really are. Also there's this great moment of supernatural dread-_"

"_Yes, thank you, I am aware of the reason for code-names. I simply don't understand why he picked these out for us. Are they a matter of Time Lord cultural significance?_"

"_You should ask him, Nine._"

A flickering light on her omni-tool grabbed Tali's attention. "Hang on, I'm reading an energy spike on the dais. It's... I don't know why I didn't pick it up before-_Kheelah sa'lai!_"

The comms erupted in a hiss of static, and Tali hurriedly turned hers off before the sonic shriek shattered her faceplate - or, more importantly, her _ears_, which were still ringing as she tapped her helmet to try to reset the circuits.

An arm snaked around her throat and pulled her away from the grate, and a serrated knife was pressed to her stomach. "Hush now, little girl," growled a low, rasping voice. "Just be still and calm, and I won't tear a hole in your skin and leave you to the infection."

Tali went rigid. "My suit will close down on the wound."

The knife slid slowly across her stomach, and Tali watched in horror as it almost casually parted layers of fiber and mesh. "How deep will it seal? I could always let you bleed out before your medications kicked in. Just be quiet and watch."

Outside the vent, there was a thunderous roar of applause as Shepard concluded her speech. Tali's comm crackled back to life, and Garrus's worried voice kicked in. "_-lee? Kaylee, do you read?_"

The growling voice chuckled. "Answer him."

Tali cleared her throat. "Hawkeye, Kaylee. There was a bit of static, but I'm fine now. What happened?"

"_Shepard did her 'We stand together, or we hang seperately' routine. Brought a tear to my eye. Aren't you supposed to be monitoring it?_"

The knife pressed closer. "Yes, yes, I'm absolutely fine, there's nothing to worry about here," she babbled, praying that Garrus would take the hint.

"_Acknowledged, Kaylee. We'll sit tight._"

Tali suppressed the urge to sigh in relief, clicking off the comm. "What are you going to do?" she asked her captor.

The voice chuckled. "Your little friend, out there on the podium? She's upset my employers, and I've arranged a little surprise for her when the meeting is over."

The knife started carving shallow grooves into the mesh overlay of Tali's environmental suit. Integrity alerts started flashing in her helmet's visual display, but she dismissed them as a distraction; it wasn't like she needed to _know_how many millimeters it would take to rupture her containment. "What kind of surprise?" she asked, trying to keep the man talking.

The chuckle returned. "Let's just say that Shepard's final speech will be a major hit with her audience. They'll have a blast."


End file.
